


Smile A Smile For Me

by honestys_easy



Category: American Idol RPF, Real Person Fiction
Genre: Activism, Alternate Universe, American Idol - RPS, Journalism, Lower East Side, M/M, New York City, Police, St. Patrick's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-03-28
Updated: 2008-07-11
Packaged: 2017-12-06 21:34:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 17
Words: 68,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/740407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honestys_easy/pseuds/honestys_easy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For New York City rookie police officer Chris Richardson, the annual St. Patrick's Day parade marks a day of professional and personal turmoil. For activist Blake Lewis it’s a chance to try to end intolerance and sway public opinion. They never imagined that it would be a beginning…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'll be the man to lead the band beneath the flag

**Author's Note:**

> After visiting the St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York City this past March, the idea for this fic, loosely based on the long-standing issue of who is allowed to march and, more controversially, who is not. Some suggesting and prodding turned into a plot idea, which turned into an AU drabble, which turned into a multi-chaptered epic. Never underestimate just how far I'll go to avoid writing term papers.

Christopher Richardson pulled the lapel of his tailored navy jacket in tighter to his chest, the brim of his wide, starched officer’s cap down lower against his eyeline. The smiling Irish sun brought no bitter cold to Midtown Manhattan, and there were no blustery winds to blow into his eyes, but still he felt dangerously exposed in the crowd of thousands. He set his jaw to feign stoic indifference as an on-duty DCCT officer passed, patrolling in a navy windbreaker and tattered cap with the stark white letters NYPD stitched on its front instead of a Yankees logo. Chris gave the man a single nod of acknowledgement, trying to remember that this was his day off and he was supposed to be enjoying this.

He wasn’t Catholic in the least, and he no one in his family was particularly vocal about the sliver of Irish in his blood, but when an opportunity arose to take off for one of the most stressful parade days for an officer, Chris wasn’t going to protest. St. Patrick’s Day Parade duty was a dreaded task for anyone on the force in any borough, let alone a rookie like himself. But as a sign of good faith, the city looked the other way on the absurd amount of personal days taken by officers every March 17, so long as they viewed the parade with a solemn respect and represented the force in their Sunday best.

The year before, still wholly green and fresh out of the academy, Chris had been stationed at the north end of the parade, where high school marching bands met up with their coach buses to return to Bridgeport or Hartford or whatever suburban New England town still had a high school marching band. Uptown, where the excitement of the parade petered out as you crept into Spanish Harlem, was always quiet and far from the din of the wild crowd: the drunks, the rowdy teenagers whose parents let them ditch school for a “cultural experience,” the violently nationalistic. This year, at least, he didn’t have to worry about ignoring open container laws and being friendly to superior officers who cherished the day off.

A disharmonious toot of an airhorn and a flood of glittery color flooded his senses: someone had thrown confetti behind him, the sparkling white, green and orange swatches of cellophane clinging to his shoulders and hat. He should have been enjoying this, he should have turned around and flashed a grin at the little girl covered head-to-toe in green, hoisted high on her father’s shoulders. He should have been snapping photos of the parade from across St. Patrick’s Cathedral for his mother, who still had never seen the austere church in person. But instead it caused him to shrink into himself more, trying to disappear into the standard-issue suit of blue. The confetti stuck to his lapels, one tricky sliver wedging itself beside his precinct badge, and it unsettled Chris that in the bright March sun the officer seemed to sparkle and glow.

The cathedral was a tourist staple in the borough, always filled to the buttresses with parishioners and secular gawkers alike. A friend from the academy, an intelligence officer by the name of Tabaldo, said he had once gone for Good Friday mass and nearly decked a shutterbug from Japan that snapped a shot of him taking communion. But as holy and spectacular the interior of St. Patrick’s was, the exterior outdid it tenfold: peaks of chiseled white stone and colored glass, reaching up to the heavens, designs as intricate as a snowflake and a stark contrast to the monstrosities of plate glass and steel that surrounded it on 5th Avenue. In all his years Chris still hadn’t seen anything like it: some of his fellow rookies loved the skyscrapers of Battery Park City or the never-ending daylight of Times Square, but Chris always found a silent and imposing beauty in the cathedral.

But today, old St. Pat’s was a monument of his anxiety, rising like Gothic belltowers, and the mounting fear of someone – anyone – finding him out.

His captain hadn’t warned him about the protests, fearing a mouse or cockroach in the precinct walls would overhear and alert the liberal media, but instead it was his fellow officers cautioning that the St. Patrick’s Day parade wasn’t all smiles and shamrocks. The strikingly public annual parade was in fact an essentially private matter, and as such the conservative Catholic groups behind its organization could exclude any groups of people they wanted from participating – and routinely did, allegedly for “immoral” reasons. Like clockwork, this caused uprisings from the very groups decidedly excluded from the festivities. He had remembered speaking with one of the mounted officers the year before on the topic, a short yet intimidating bald man who had entered the academy right out of high school.

> _“I don’t get it,” Chris had been new to Manhattan at the time, still not versed in the political lore of yesteryear, still believing there were alligators living in the sewers. “It’s not like you’ve got a horde of Hassid storming St. Pat’s. Hell, isn’t this about being Irish, not Catholic?” The mounted had a shamrock pinned to his lapel inconspicuously, but no crucifix around his neck; Chris assumed he’d be sympathetic. “So why…”_
> 
> “So why the gays?” The man’s voice was indifferent but harsh; the tint from his aviator sunglasses veiled the pained expression crossing Chris’s face. “Started a long while back, almost twenty years now. An Irish gay and lesbian group wanted to march in the parade: thought, well, at least on March 17, the ol’ green isle blood came together, right? Wrong.” The mounted officer shook his head, then patted his mare soothingly as a noisemaker blared. “The city denied their request, said it was the parade organizers’ prerogative…there’ve been protests every year after that – it’s shaping up to be a damn feud by now.”
> 
> Chris’s throat had gone dry, the question itching at his lips, scrambling to get out. “And what do you think?” He didn’t even know the officer’s name, couldn’t see his expression behind those aviators; he didn’t know how safe it was to even ask. “Should they be allowed to march? I mean, if it really is about being Irish…”
> 
> The mounted officer let Chris drift off, his jaw set, eyes staring past his sunglasses out to nothing in particular. “We gotta deal with the drunks at this parade, the belligerent assholes…gotta direct two miles of traffic away from one of the busiest streets of Manhattan. And the damn church gives these people a reason to protest and add another problem onto the pile. We’re lucky they don’t riot.” It was a typical cop’s answer, Chris realized, one that spoke to the enforcer in him, and not the other side.

He had yet to learn to keep those two sides – the cop, and the man behind the badge – diplomatically apart. 

The crowd had begun to thicken around him: no one was pushing, probably to deliberately avoid jostling the young man in uniform, but Chris was definitely feeling the air intensify around him with density and something else he couldn’t identify. The crowd was an overwhelming mass of green, waving Irish flags and donning nearly every shade. But every now and again Chris spied of flash of rainbow across 51st Street, a determined fist pumped into the air, a defiant chant followed by an uproar of voices on the steps of St. Patrick’s. Even though the parade ran along 5th Avenue, Chris found the activities on the other edge of the intersection more interesting, and soon the baton-twirlers from Smithtown were far from his attention.

The rallies were always peaceable, his colleagues informed him, always verging on provocative, and everyone behaved themselves as much as a liberal social group clashing with an ancient house of worship ever could. The police presence around the church was astounding, but it was more to protect the protesters than hinder them. Chris thought bitterly, they might not even attempt to protect them: as far as the force was concerned, the sky could burst forth with damning lightning bolts and strike them all down, so long as it didn’t get then in hot water with their captains or on the 5 o’clock news.

At the low points of the parade their shouts were barely coherent over the din of the crowd; at the high points the brass bands or bagpipes almost always drowned them out. Chris wondered if the little girl behind him would ever know about their plight, their ardent battle just to belong and to be. He wondered if her loving father would ever tell her why these men and women wore all the colors that day instead of just green like her. His face couldn’t help but form a frown, doubting that even by her time would their protests ever be heard.

It was one of those lulls in the festivities, spaces between marchers allotted to keep with time and traffic, when Chris heard it. The startling blare of a megaphone cut through the air, distracting some but putting Chris’s nerves at attention. Then, a low beat murmured through the crowd: a guttural, mechanical sound but somehow organic at its roots, like a voice warped through a synthesizer. It didn’t sound human, but there was no doubt the sound was breathing. The sound seemed more to drift and evolve than actually change, a clear, resonating voice rising above the noise of the avenue. Dozens more heads turned towards the wide steps of the cathedral; Chris strained his neck, forgetting his desire to hide from the crowd in lieu of his curiosity.

The voice, echoing out of the megaphone and against the solid face of the church, belonged to a man short in stature but giant in conviction alone. He had an attractive enough face and his meticulously spiked hair must have taken an hour to perfect, but it was the fire in his golden brown eyes that made him so alluring. He held an open palm to the crowd as he spoke, instead of an angry fist; his words were forceful but never aggressive, never giving a mildly interested crowd the chance to turn on him. Even from across the street Chris could identify a dyed-green carnation pinned to the man’s t-shirt, neatly placed next to an understated rainbow flag.

To the indifferent eye – to the tourists reveling in the group’s spectacle, to the old world couples waiting for the next drumline to stroll up the avenue – he was unremarkable. To Chris, he was an absolute vision.

“What do we want!” he shouted into the megaphone, the air charged with the electric attraction of his voice, and all around him erupted the enthusiastic, albeit disorganized roar of protest, dozens of voices calling for equality above the bagpipes. Their ringleader picked up the call, spinning the syllables on their ends, working both the word and the concept around an adept tongue like he owned them, like he invented equality and was benevolently requesting it for the masses.

Never before had Chris seen someone so intensely fascinating; he wondered how it was possible the crowd hadn’t yet fallen at his feet to acquiesce his every demand. Chris had an instant desire to reach him, to know him, but the density of the crowd and the uniform he wore stayed his will and his feet. An off-duty cop entranced by a gay rights activist on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral…oh, if that wouldn’t be a photo-op for Page Six of the _Post_ , he didn’t even know what would be.

He would have been content to watch the man all day, watch him in his element, capturing the attentions of the crowd and putting forth his message for the whole world to hear. Hell, the whole of Ireland could march by and he couldn’t care less. Everyone’s eyes were either on the parade route or the cathedral; no one was noticing the silent thrall in the rookie cop’s emerald eyes, the way his lips moved to the protesters’ chants without producing any sound.

What they did notice was the daring one of the group – a tall, lanky boy, looking barely into his teenage years with a head of deeply-parted dark hair – get a foothold onto the cornerstone of the church, a Technicolor-bright flag clutched in his fist. He extended his lithe frame up against the face of the cathedral, carefully balancing himself to string up the flag alongside the banners of the church – the flying colors of Ireland, the American flag, and the pristine white of the Catholic Church. Clearly pleased with himself, the young man flashed a toothy grin Chris could see from across the street. The swath of rainbow fluttered in the calm March breeze, and for one shining moment the group cheered, the visual representation of what they were trying to accomplish up for the whole world to see.

Chris felt like cheering himself, watching the vocal and confident ringleader turn towards the boy with a look of pride in his eyes. But the sunny look quickly turned to one of deep, sinking horror, the smile on his face falling as a thick, rough arm reached up from the mass of people in the crowd and grabbed angrily at the boy. The arm found nothing on its first attempt, but on a second try it caught hold of the young brunette’s belt, closing like a clamp to the shock of the boy and yanking him down from the face of the church. Without anything to hold onto he was helpless to the force and was pulled backwards, pitching over into a crowd that looked far from harmless. Chris’s eyes widened along with the boy’s: as the slender body fell to earth, rage-filled hands engulfed him, one clenching into a fist and making brutal contact with the side of his head.

The peaceful protest was quickly devolving into something less than peaceful. Roars from the crowds on St. Patrick’s steps erupted and sounded raw and different from the defiant shouts before. Heavy, stocky paradegoers with faces red in both rage and drunkenness stormed the group, a sea of green Notre Dame jerseys overtaking flags of rainbows and pink triangles. This was going to get violent, and out of hand, very soon.

“Hey, Don’t you – we’re not hurting anyone!” The voice in the megaphone, the one that belonged to that alluring man Chris couldn’t rip his gaze from, now sounded panicked and fearful; he looked around him at the cathedral, the situation slipping out of his control. “All we ask – _get your hands off me!_ ”

Chris lost sight of the man, his eyes widening in fear; he didn’t even know him, but he felt he needed to stop this deep in his heart, if only for his sake. Instinctively he sprang into action, ignoring the voice in the back of his head reminding him he wasn’t on duty and didn’t have his handcuffs, or even his firearm. The dense crowd parted as best they could to let the officer pass, his face stony but a panic-stricken look deep in his eyes. Chris hadn’t felt his feet carry him all the way across 51st Street to the steps of St. Patrick’s and into the quickly-escalating fray; he had all his attentions set on the space where he saw the other man’s head disappear into the crowd, determined to let no harm come to him.

“Stop! NYPD!” Chris shouted into the crowd, brandishing his badge and hoping that just the sight of his uniform could stop the fight before it turned into a riot…or a massacre. He looked around the cathedral’s entrance: a half dozen paradegoers, who all looked like they could have been linebackers in some distant past, were at the epicenter of the mayhem; one of them held the brunette boy’s hair in his fist. The on-duty officers Chris had seen before were now nowhere to be found; either they were actively avoiding getting into the fight, or they were taking their sweet time to stop it. The rainbow flag still swayed in the breeze alongside the others on the face of the church.

Reaching down into the mass of people, Chris pulled a stumbling woman to her feet, not stopping to listen to her words of gratitude as he came closer to the fight. He nearly tripped over the megaphone at his feet, its plastic casing shattered, wires splayed everywhere like spidery copper vines.

He had to be close, Chris thought, and as he quickly scanned the crowd he saw him, eyes filled with a different kind of smoldering fire than before, arm raised not in an open gesture of peace but in a closed fist against a tartan-clad aggressor twice his size. His cheek swelled with bruising and a thin rivulet of blood trickled out of the corner of his mouth, but he looked like he had gotten a few good licks in himself: the larger man’s nose was dripping with blood, staining his green clothes a wet, muddy brown, and there was a cut on the side of his face with the impression of what looked to be a ring.

Blood had already been shed; the fight had already started. And it looked like Chris would be the only one to stop it from turning into a disaster.

“Break it up!” he shouted, the uniform alone working wonders at avoiding many a brawl before it began. Chris pushed through the crowd, broad shoulders and arms paving his way. At the sound of his order the activist lowered his fist, but the other man had a different plan; seeing the smaller man’s guard down, he snapped back his fist and took aim, very willing to give an updated definition to the term sucker punch.

But he wasn’t nearly fast enough to beat Chris to the punch. With reflexes first tapped in high school football and fine-tuned through the months at the academy, Chris ducked behind the large man and grasped at his bicep, fingers clamping around tissue and jerking the arm back behind his drink-addled head. Chris secured the other arm in a hold roughly against the other man’s back, immobilizing both arms and making sure the instigator didn’t try to also lash out at him.

“I said,” Chris seethed, his own muscles tensing as he gave another tug at the man’s arms none too gently. “Break it up.”

Clearly impaired by rage and alcohol, the large man tried to wrestle out of the officer’s grasp, but Chris held him firm, refusing to show the nerves that told him he had no way to actually restrain this man if things got out of hand. “Who’re you, fuckhead?” The man slurred, face red with frustration.

“You really want to start shit with me?” Chris growled into the other man’s ear, his temper flaring. The brim of his starched cap had been tipped up in the scuffle, his meticulously neat uniform now wrinkled and creasing at his shoulders and elbows as he held onto the man. He had done exactly what he had hoped not to do today; he called attention to himself, he broke away from the safe anonymity New York was so well known for in order to save the alluring man and diffuse a near riot. “Officer Richardson,” he gave the drunken man’s arms another yank for good measure. “NYPD.”


	2. On your green banks I wander where first I did join

_My God._

Blake Lewis stumbled backwards as the fist reared back to hit him, bracing himself for the impact and readying his exasperated nerves to make a counterattack. But the blow never came; when Blake looked up again, head throbbing with adrenaline, the drunken parade-goer that first assaulted him was in a Nelson hold, his face as red as the blood dripping from his nose and as fiery as his hair, making him look like a poor man’s tomato costume. Someone had him in a strong, sure grip; it was probably the only thing preventing Blake from receiving a quick and painful beating.

But who was it?

All around him, the passive protest was falling apart into a street brawl; all the hopes Blake had for this rally, the chance that the pull of public opinion might one day make their world a little better, was crumbling away with every punch thrown and hateful obscenity heard. Whoever stopped this man, whoever this was that interceded just in time, wasn’t anyone Blake recognized as part of the protest group. But the navy suit, the brass shield on the man’s chest shining brighter than the multi-colored confetti clinging to his clothing…was this guy a cop?

He saw his would-be rescuer say something to the man in custody, a disgusted snarl on his face. Blake had to strain to hear over the roar of the crowd and the pounding in his ears. _Officer Richardson…so he is a cop, after all._ He watched the officer’s eyes narrow to slits as he sneered at the aggressor, a startling green that seemed too right for the occasion. His jaw was squared and hard underneath a neatly trimmed goatee, but his features showed something else, a promise of softness when the uniform was off. Blake couldn’t help but think of this man, shoulders strong and the toned bulk of his body evident in the light, and what he might look like when the uniform was off.

Slowly he heard more shouts around him, with more authority in their tone and less like the startled cries of his friends and allies he had heard before. Whistles, too: a bolt of navy blue passed by him brusquely and without apology; another cop, looking slightly less well-groomed than the one in front of him. The officers that had been patrolling the cathedral before, the ones Blake’s legal advisers told him would be there for their safety, had miraculously re-materialized, as if it took one of their own to actually step in and do something.

The cops were there alright, making quite a show of regaining peace and order at the church steps, blowing whistles and directing everyone’s attention back to the slow march of the parade. But what they were visibly not doing was making any arrests: they were breaking up any lingering altercations, escorting the drunken menaces away from the scene and down 51st Street. But Blake saw no handcuffs, heard no Miranda rights...he even watched one of the officers give a man with a bloodied lip an understated pat on the back. It wasn’t any surprise to him that it took so long for the officers to even respond.

One of those officers, a sergeant, had gone up to Blake’s aggressor, mumbling a few words too low for Blake to overhear to both the man in question and the cop restraining him. He watched with fascinated tunnel vision as the meadow green eyes turned cold at the sergeant’s words, a strange, defiant temper flaring on his face. With palpable reluctance the officer released the drunken man from his grip while the drunk’s irate, bloated red face shouted out obscenities and threats of lawsuits. The thought alone of this drunken asshole taking legal action against the man that stopped him, the man that _saved_ Blake, made the young activist’s blood boil and his bile rise. The officer with the irresistibly green eyes and a fierce righteousness was only doing his job, let along being a decent human being…which was far more than Blake could say for his fellow officers.

With a nauseating grin that made Blake rethink his stance on peaceful communication, the drunken man stumbled past him and away, pausing only to spit a mouthful of blood and saliva at Blake’s feet. _This guy was fucking lucky the cop held him back,_ Blake thought with a sneer as he wiped the rivulet of blood from his mouth. _Or else I would have destroyed him._

“Commish doesn’t want another news story,” he overheard the disaffected voice of the on-duty sergeant, and Blake turned around to fully view the situation at hand. Seeing the two officers side by side, it was uncanny that the one off-duty, his shoulders squared and fists clenched at his sides, looked more assured and in control than the sergeant lecturing him. “Just go back to your _day off_ ,” the sergeant glanced down at the officer’s badge; the officer didn’t flinch. “Richardson.” With one more stern look to the young officer he departed, returning to whatever corner of the parade would be best to ignore any other laws being broken around him.

The young officer’s glance caught Blake’s eye; now it was only the two of them, alone among a sea of people. For the first time all day Blake felt speechless: today was his day to be vocal, to step up and tell the world what he wanted, demand what he and his contemporaries deserved. But in these eyes he saw a sudden realization in the officer, a hint of admiration for the activist, and was that a flash of fear? Blake knew that look too well, saw it in the eyes of many an onlooker when he led protests, in the scathing reviews of his articles by those who denounced his lifestyle a little too enthusiastically.

If it were anyone else Blake would have called him out on that look in his eyes. But the bald truth he saw in them, the ones that held fear not of who Blake was and what he had done but fear of his own secrets and desires, made Blake still his tongue. And it was the beauty that he saw, deeper than the fear, that kicked the air out of his lungs and now there was nothing Blake could find to say.

Taking Blake’s silence as that of indifference and not of quiet captivation, the officer gave a tight-lipped smile towards him, tipped his navy cap and turned to leave. “Wait – wait!” This brought vocabulary back to Blake’s brain, the thought of the officer leaving and not even thanking him for interceding, and the regret he’d undoubtedly feel if he never learned Officer Richardson’s first name.

“Th-thank you,” Blake was embarrassed, almost shocked to hear the stammer in his own voice; this shyness, coming from a man who had just started a none-too-friendly chant about the Pope and young altar boys earlier in the day? But with that stare on him, those eyes that stood out among a sea of different greens, Blake found his eloquence lacking.

The officer gave a shy smile, ducked his head; made Blake want to tilt his chin up gently with his hand to catch that smile face to face. “Just doin’ my job,” he said, the tiniest hint of one of the few accents not native to New York curling around the syllables.

Blake quirked an eyebrow at the statement. “You did a hell of a lot more than your buddies back there.” He threw a thumb back in the direction of the retreating officers; he felt his own heart sink when the other man’s smile faltered.

“They’re not my buddies,” he mumbled, barely loud enough for Blake to hear. The officer shrugged his shoulders, eyes trying to look anywhere but at Blake’s, almost knowing that Blake could read the emotions hidden behind the pale green. “Then I guess I just did what a decent person would have done.”

“Thank you,” Blake repeated; he felt like he couldn’t say it enough. He and the officer both knew that stepping into a fight that was not your own, risking harm to yourself, going against that silent code of behavior that gripped every police force from here to Kilarney…that was more than being merely decent. He wanted to say more, wanted to introduce himself and perhaps get a chance to feel the strength behind the officer’s handshake that he knew was there, but a loud whoop came from behind Blake, a familiar and currently unwelcome voice piercing through the air.

“Motherfucking pigs!” exclaimed the voice, sounding less like an enraged, disenfranchised citizen and more like a whining teenager. Perhaps, Blake thought to himself, that was a more appropriate description for the brunette than he first realized. He felt a slap against his back, and there the teenager was, eyes rolling to the pristine blue sky and his tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth. Despite being the central cause of the fight, the young man looked none worse for the wear; he had a reddening bruise above his left eye and his hair was no longer in the painfully precise side part, but he had fared far better than some of the others in the group, Blake included.

“Danny,” Blake said, careful not to sound too judgmental or authoritative but making sure the tone in his voice conveyed his current displeasure toward the young man. Almost a trademark Danny characteristic by now was his ability to find the exact method by which to irritate someone, to get underneath their skin, and use it against them. Blake had gotten wise to this sly tactic of his very early in their friendship and would never let himself get too riled up by the boy. He hoped that the officer with the kind eyes and shy smile didn’t end up leaving because of it.

The young man known as Danny Noriega continued on, unfazed by Blake’s bemused tone. “They took down my flag, and I can’t find it _anywhere_ , and I bet they took it back to their fucking stationhouse or what-the-fuck- _ever_ and are probably all circle jerking all over it, fucking giving themselves a pat on the back for fucking with the fags and getting away with it, _again_.” Danny took in a deep, dramatic sigh as he draped an arm over Blake’s shoulder with a flourish. “And they wanted to arrest me for _vandalism._ Vandalism! I told those fuckers it was an improvement from the old look. For fifteen seconds I made St. Pat’s _fierce._ ”

For the first time since he started speaking, Danny noticed the young officer standing opposite Blake, his face and the tips of his ears burning an embarrassed shade of carnation pink, mouth sucking in his bottom lip self-consciously. Danny narrowed his eyes and took aim; he was never one for authority figures. “What you lookin’ at, _cerdo_?” he sneered; Blake could feel the wind from Danny’s head shaking side to side from here. “You have fun pushing faggots around? Were you _likin’_ it?”

“Danny,” he said again, harsher this time. Blake had warned the young man about using that term, told him about its history and the hatred and oppression behind it. But Danny wasn’t much of a listener, and if someone told him not to do something he’d go out of his way to prove them wrong. The officer seemed to have a thicker skin than Blake realized: he stood his ground, even smirking good-naturedly at Danny, realizing that his words were more to grant him attention than to actually harm.

“I know what you’ve said Blake, but I’m gonna say it when I _want_ to.”

“And so I reserve the right to slap you upside the head whenever I want to,” came another voice, deeper this time, and sure enough a hand rose up to smack against the back of Danny’s skull, potent but not nearly hard enough to bruise. As Danny rubbed his scalp, his ego damaged more than his body, a taller man stepped up to the small group, with darker, olive skin and a smirk across his face. “Is the little one bothering you, Blake?”

Before Blake could open his mouth to speak, the officer found himself answering, an automatic response to hearing a question that requires only one type of answer. “We’re fine,” he said, his ears still rather pink. Something deep inside of Blake jumped with excitement that the other man had answered “ _we’re_ fine” instead of “ _I’m_ fine,” and he couldn’t for the life of him understand why.

The new arrival seemed to first notice Officer Richardson standing there at the sound of his voice; he looked the tall officer up and down slowly and deliberately, not even bothering to hide the kick of lust in his eyes while imagining the body underneath the uniform. “I’ll say you’re fine,” he mumbled under his breath, and Blake had the sudden illogical desire to string _him_ up on St. Patrick’s flagpole and leave him there.

But despite the bemused look on Blake’s face at the interruptions, despite the voracious gleam in his friend’s eyes, the officer appeared unfazed, ignoring the words that had been meant for him to hear. “So your name’s Blake…” he said, turning his attentions full on to the older man, thinly veiled tone of amusement in his voice. Something stirred inside of Blake at the sight of those green eyes upon him; he realized that this was far beyond the young officer simply being polite, and he was loving every moment of it.

Flashing a genuine, winning smile, the one that never failed to charm the pants off of a eunuch, Blake stretched out his hand across the small expanse of air between them. “Blake Lewis,” he introduced himself, and tried not to gasp when the officer accepted the offer and shook his hand. His firm grip ensured a strong, healthy body below the navy uniform, but he didn’t take this as an opportunity to show that strength off and crush Blake’s hand in his grip. Blake noticed that, he was noticing it all, and he found the daring to brush his thumb against the rough skin of the other man’s hand. “And you’re Officer Richardson.”

For a brief moment the young officer started, smile dropping and eyes signaling a sudden fear; the grip of his hand on Blake’s tightened instinctively. But the moment faded as quickly as it had come; Blake made a point to nod in the direction of the officer’s nameplate, the embossed last name glinting off the bronze in the March sun. The young man looked almost afraid to think that Blake might have known him from somewhere else. “Richardson,” he repeated Blake’s words, then stopped himself, looking a bit more tongue-tied than even Blake. A flustered grin spread across his face as he realized his mistake. “That’s not what I meant, I meant, yeah, Richardson…Chris. I’m Chris. Richardson.”

Blake couldn’t help but laugh along with the officer’s jumble of words; Chris’s smile was infectious, neat rows of teeth behind perfectly fleshy lips that were _definitely_ going to dance around Blake’s dreams later that night. “You’re Chris Richardson,” Blake repeated with just the tiniest hint of amusement in his voice. Chris pulled in his bottom lip between his teeth, pink staining his cheeks at the sound of his name on Blake’s lips. Both men had noticed that, while the customary introductory shaking of the hands had quite finished, they still held on to each other’s palm, firmly but not desperately so, with enough slack for either of them to let go. Neither man had any plans to do so.

Unfortunately for the pair, Blake’s friends were not quite aware of these plans. “I’m David Hernandez,” chimed in the older of the two, his smile dazzling and his keenness in introducing himself to Chris apparent. He thrust his hand in between the two, and reluctantly Blake had to let go of Chris’s hand or else their extended handshake would be more than conspicuous. With a weak, almost disappointed smile, Chris greeted David with a shake of his hand, though far less enthusiastically than he had with Blake’s, and made a point of holding on for no longer than was absolutely necessary. Blake’s hand twitched at his side, his mind racing for some excuse to touch Chris’s hand again, to feel his skin underneath his fingertips.

David narrowed his eyes at the young officer, scrutinizing his face. Chris’s cheeks burned a brighter crimson, and he pulled the brim of his cap down once more, shielding at least a portion of his face from David’s examining eyes. “You look familiar…” David started, and Blake tried to hide the rolling of his eyes with a discreet cough. The man needed to get a new pick-up line; he had worn that one out by Christmas 2006. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Probably not,” Chris murmured, eyes now looking anywhere but David’s face. He was obviously uncomfortable with this line of questioning; Blake wished David would stop, for more reasons than one.

“Are you sure?” David prodded; he either didn’t notice the sudden stiffness in Chris’s demeanor, or else he didn’t care. “Ever go to The Zipper Factory? Sin Sin?” David’s eyebrow perked suggestively, a perfect arch that led more men into David’s arms than Blake could count. “Happy Ending?”

Blake was about to finally stand up and stop David’s blatant flirting – there was no way David could tell definitively if the young officer was gay, and he should have been able to tell by a mile that either way Chris wasn’t interested. “David,” he warned, noticing the tension in the clenched hand at Chris’s side.

Waving a disinterested hand at Blake, David sighed dramatically and turned his eyes to the azure sky. “Whatever,” he breathed. “It’s not like he goes to your boring old Cake Shop.”

Chris seemed to perk up at this; he turned once again to Blake, head cocked slightly to the side, chin tilted up by the tiniest fraction to catch the late winter sun past the brim of his cap. “ _Your_ Cake Shop?” he questioned, smile playing on his lips. 

“I just work there,” replied Blake with a shrug, coy little smile at the corners of his mouth that all of his friends back home used to call the moneymaker. “It’s a café, bar, record shop…a whole mix of things, I guess. There’re some indie gigs nights, loud beats you can really groove to –“

“Really?” Chris’s demeanor seemed to perk up at this, a sparkle in smiling green eyes. He seemed quite interested in Blake’s work and decidedly not mentioning any of the club names David had dropped earlier. “What kind of bands do you get? Is it just like a kid in a coffee shop, or do you have a whole sound mixing system set up?” His questions kept coming with a bit of excitement behind them; Blake hadn’t realized how much interest a rookie cop would have in the technical aspects of his little hole-in-the-wall venue. A slice of hope rose in Blake’s thoughts; maybe Chris was asking so many questions just for an excuse to keep talking with Blake.

He decided to take the bait; at the very worst he could make the Cake Shop the new hangout for attractive young good Samaritans on the force. He knew the rest of his customers wouldn’t be complaining. “You should really check it out if you’re that interested,” he tried to keep his voice even, cool; Blake was getting signals large as the Chrysler Building from the officer, but even still he couldn’t be sure and pissing off a straight cop by flirting with him was not one of the ways Blake planed to piss off the police force that day.

A loud, dramatic sigh erupted from beside him; he knew that call for attention anywhere. “You’re boring me,” Danny moaned, resting one elbow on Blake’s shoulder, the other arm on David’s. Blake was about to mention none too kindly that Danny wasn’t particularly “bored” when the small mob of angry parade-goers were about to bash his skull in, but he didn’t want to appear catty. Besides, he surmised, any attention he didn’t spend on Chris at this moment could make the officer feel unwanted, and if there was one thing on Blake’s mind it was not letting this man leave prematurely.

“We’re not all here to please you, boy,” David chimed in, turning his head to survey the area around them. A boom microphone rising above the heads in the crowd caught his attention. “Come on,” he pulled at Danny’s elbow, “let’s go check out the camera crew.” He gave a knowing glance towards Blake, tiniest hint of a nod in his direction. David was frowning but his eyes held a silent understanding: he had been beat, and in the games of love and war the man was content to concede this one to Blake.

“Is it NY1 or Eyewitness News?” Danny asked before nearly being dragged off by the arm by David, hastily giving his friend some personal time with the well-bodied and well-meaning officer. Blake reminded himself to buy David a drink for that later.

But the absence of the others seemed to have the opposite effect on Chris; the officer shrank back into himself now that he and Blake were alone, a ducked head and a shy pink blush dotting his cheeks. His hand fell self-consciously onto his inner thigh, tapping out a beat on the heavy navy cotton, and Blake realized it was more a nervous habit than an invitation. “I should probably go,” he mumbled, stirring up a disappointing fear in Blake’s gut like nothing else he’d felt before. The older man wanted to protest, wanted to yell and rage against the simple thing of a man he just met getting away from an advancing throng of reporters as if parting from Blake would be akin to a war crime.

But before he could get the words out – before he could stop the officer, maybe hold him back physically and get to touch him once more – Chris gave him a gentle smile, his calmness a stark contrast to the snarling enforcer Blake had first seen in him. The activist couldn’t decide which incarnation of Chris Richardson aroused him more.

“I just wanted to say,” Chris continued, hands nervously fiddling with the hem of his uniform jacket, shamrock green eyes staring into Blake so intensely that it would make him feel violated if he didn’t enjoy it so much. “That you’re doing a great thing here. I bet you don’t hear this from a lot of cops, but you’re hearing it from me. What you do…it’s very…” he bit the flesh of his lip again; Blake could tell he was searching for the right word, the word to best compliment the activist but not appear as flattery. Finally he spoke, the naked, honest look back in his eyes, the same feeling Blake saw when they first met. “It’s very brave.”

 _Telling me you’re supporting open institutional dissent against fellow police officers and helping a group of gay upstarts while in uniform?_ Blake thought as, for the second time today, Officer Richardson left him speechless. _Now that, my man, is brave._

Chris reached out a hand towards Blake; at first he thought Chris was looking for a parting handshake, but before Blake could raise his own hand to meet his, Chris was aiming higher, closer. His fingers made contact with the carnation pinned to Blake’s shirt: a small boutonniere-like souvenir hawked by vendors from here to Lexington Avenue. It was cheaply made, the white blossom with the tips dyed green and spruced up with a seafoam green ribbon, but Blake thought it complemented the rainbow pin by its side nicely, aptly representing what he was fighting for. Blake now realized none of the many greens he had seen paraded around all day even compared to the hue staring at him right now.

Calloused yet gentle fingers danced along the petals, barely brushing against the thin layer of cotton between Chris’s touch and Blake’s chest. The older man’s breath hitched in his throat at the touch, mesmerized by Chris’s stare, and the tentative press of a thumb to his chest. “Happy St. Patrick’s Day,” Chris managed, voice barely above a whisper but Blake was so entranced by his face he could have practically read his lips at that point.

“Hey Shorty!” The shout rising above the hum of the crows broke Blake out of his reverie; a terrible, dreaded thing, but also good in that Blake would have probably grabbed the officer by his neat little lapels and ravished him right on the steps of St. Pat’s if he didn’t snap out of it. It was David, interrupting yet again but this time for a purpose. “NY1’s here, they want to interview you!”

And just like that, the anxious yet welcoming touch was gone, the warmth from those fingers slipped away and Blake was left standing alone in a sea of people, merrymakers all but for the one that got away. His eyes searched for that warm, unique green in the officer’s eyes, but it was nowhere to be found.

A chestnut-haired, decidedly Canadian young woman tapped Blake on the shoulder, a microphone in one hand, followed quickly by a clumsy production crew obviously not practiced enough to carry heavy camera equipment through the St. Patrick’s Day parade. “I’m here with journalist and protest organizer Blake Lewis at the scene…”

With a heavy sigh Blake readied himself for the interviewer, trying to keep his mind focused on her questions but continuing to drift to thoughts of those Irish green eyes, the warm touch on his chest, and the heart of the man underneath the navy blue police uniform.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Animosity between the police force and gay rights activists aren't as strained and corrupt as I'm describing here, but it makes for good tension, and it's not completely false. In an article I referenced last week, [Bigotry on Parade, Again](http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19409674&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=6), it paints a good description of the relations between the two groups this past year.
> 
> David lists off a few bars in New York that have, for some reason or another, been designated gay hot spots by _Time Out New York_ magazine. They're scattered all over Manhattan - [The Zipper Factory](http://www.zippertheater.com/) is near the Lincoln Tunnel towards New Jersey, [Sin Sin](http://www.leopardloungenyc.com/) is in the East Village, and [Happy Ending](http://www.happyendinglounge.com/) is just north of Chinatown - so it's unlikely that David frequents all of these places. But I really liked their names so there you go. Thinking about his character I'd think he hangs out in the more exclusive, hush-hush club area of the Meatpacking District. No pun intended.
> 
> [The Cake Shop](http://cake-shop.com/) is a real place in the Lower East Side; more on that later, I promise. (Also, there appears to be a cake Shop in Jacksonville, FL, but it _actually_ sells cakes. Heh.)
> 
> NY1 is a local cable news channel in New York; I don't know a whole lot about the channel or its format as I've never had it. But the Canadian brunette interviewing Blake is a nod to the character Robin Sherbatsky on How I Met Your Mother. Though I swear, no one's going to be playing a little game called "Haaaaave you met Officer Rich?" ;)


	3. All for to tarry with me one night, and go home in the morning early

Chris smoothed the front of his button-down shirt for the sixth time between train stops and fretted about how many drinks it would take for him to admit he yearned to get Blake Lewis’s clothes off.

It hadn’t been the decision to go to the Cake Shop that night that unsettled him – that had been on his mind ever since he abruptly left Blake on the steps of St. Patrick’s Cathedral that afternoon; he made that decision the moment his eyes tore away from the charming, strong-willed man. It was the preparation into going that solidified the fact he was following up on an attractive chance encounter with another man. He had Googled the miniscule music venue the moment he got into his apartment and stripped off his uniform, the neatly fitting suit and navy hat feeling restrictive and tight ever since he arrived back in Brooklyn. Finding the directions to the bar, dressing and undressing countless times trying to find the most satisfactory outfit that was both stylish and attractive but didn’t reek of trying too hard. It all spoke of premeditation, of thought and care behind this, and that idea both thrilled and scared Chris.

He liked Blake; even the most macho part of him, the part that inhaled beer and nachos while watching football and scratching himself would allow himself to say that Blake Lewis was certainly someone the officer should get to know a little better. Every other part of him, particularly the parts underneath the coarse denim of his jeans, was urging Chris on to the Cake Shop for more than stimulating conversation.

Chris had never felt an attraction so strong, like a magnetic pull drawing him towards the other man. This feeling inside of him, the yearning mixed with jealousy as he watched men walk down the street, proudly hand-in-hand, while he was on duty…it was easier to repress and ignore than he thought. But when it came to this man, his sly little smile and compassionate, golden eyes…Chris couldn’t help himself, couldn’t stop from reaching out and grazing Blake’s chest in the throng of people. Blake made all these emotions Chris avoided rise out of the depths of his mind; he made Chris want to kiss him in front of that news camera instead of fleeing.

Emerging out of the subway tunnel entrance into the cool air of a night on the verge of spring, Chris acclimated himself to his surroundings; the lost, bewildered feeling he used to get when first getting off of a train in the city was fading every day. The Cake Shop was tucked into a corner of the Lower East Side, between a dilapidated bodega and an imposing, new condo building, two markers of the neighborhood’s past and future. The area wasn’t well-known for its accessibility, and even after transferring trains Chris found himself walking a fair distance to Ludlow Street, his heart pounding harder in his ears with every step. Was he actually following through with this?

The boisterous, drunken festivities of St. Patrick’s Day in New York never really ended with the parade: tourists and locals alike streamed into any bar they could find in Midtown to begin drinking, or to continue their buzz from earlier in the day. Around his fiercely Irish-Italian neighborhood in Bay Ridge, Chris had seen lines outside the doors of every pub and bar with Guinness on tap, rowdy groups of college kids and retirees alike looking to celebrate.

A pale young woman staggered in front of him, raven hair striping her face, happy Irish lilting laugh indicating that she was in no danger or trouble. She and the friends closely following her across Houston Street were the only St. Patrick’s Day merrymakers Chris saw in the neighborhood here: the Lower East Side was a strange mix of immigrant families and up-and-coming hipsters, two groups of New Yorkers not typically found inside the corner sports bar or Irish pub. The streets were free of those festivities down here, and he doubted the Cake Shop would have any seasonal decorations up at all.

He could hear the distant, dulled sounds of an electric guitar as he rounded Ludlow Street; the nightly show had already begun. Chris wondered if the neighbors complained constantly about the noise or the young, impetuous crowd it must attract. He could think of a dozen or so quality of life violations as he approached the entrance, a cheery wooden sandwich board welcoming him, but he was off-duty until noon the next day, and he surely wasn’t going to issue tickets to his new friend’s place of work.

The thought stalled in his chest. Was Blake Lewis as just a friend what he really wanted?

To Chris’s surprise, the Cake Shop was ornately ready for the holiday: green foil shamrocks dotted the wood-paneled walls, the low light of table votives causing them to flicker and dance. Bright green garlands were strung onto the ceiling and the modest bar, among yellowed and faded posters of the rock gods of yesteryear. Shamrock fairy lights swung atop the tables and in the far corner of the narrow café, where a small but inviting collection of LPs and 45s sat in the dim light of the room.

But the first thing to really catch his eyes in the café was him. Standing behind the bar, not looking up and barely moving, his fingers tapping an unknown beat against the wooden countertop out of habit. His hair was softer now than the gelled spikes he had that morning, blond streaks shining through even in the dim light. The rainbow pin and Irish green carnation were still pinned on his chest, but instead of the modest black shirt he wore a white shirt stretching tightly over his defined shoulders and chest. The outline of a few brightly-colored tattoos peeked through the thin, light material, but the words “Fuck Me, I’m Irish” in bold green letters across his chest seemed to be getting the most attention.

Chris thought seeing Blake again would stir up some emotion in him, but nothing like this, the sudden desire to wipe away the bar, the bad indie music, _everything_ except for just the two men. He didn’t expect to feel his heart swell and his gut throb at the simple act of Blake tapping his fingers against the bar, wanting those fingers to be dancing along his skin instead. He didn’t expect Blake to have such an effect on him; that the whole world would seem to fall away when Chris set eyes on him.

When Chris stepped into the threshold of the Cake Shop and Blake’s head shot up to greet the new patron, unaware of the visitor’s identity, an entirely different feeling washed over Chris. The slight red bruising on Blake’s right cheek had blossomed into a full-on bruise, the raw purple marring the strong beauty of his face. The bruise also brought Chris's thoughts back to the morning, back to the drunken, angry bigots that turned a peaceful protest into a street fight. A flicker of anger rose up in Chris, burning with the need to track down that one man in eight million that did such a thing to Blake’s face and pay him back for it tenfold. Make sure he’d never look in the mirror again without thinking of the man he attacked, and of the officer’s rage.

A flash of shock crossed over Blake’s face at the sight of Chris in the doorway of the shop; at first Chris thought his presence unwelcome, and started chiding himself immediately, cursing the thought that he should have ever come here. But then a broad smile spread over Blake’s face, a grin that lit up the entire room. It made Chris almost wish he could walk out the door and enter again, just to see that dawning of glee on the activist’s face once more.

Chris noticed Blake’s fingers tapping out a very different beat than before as he approached the old wooden bar; there was more of a purpose to the drumming, more anxiousness and excitement than a tapping for the sake of noise. A roar of an electric guitar, louder and closer than when he had heard back on the street, erupted from below the bar. Considering the tiny confines of the café itself and the small number of customers milling about, Chris gathered that the concert venue, as well as the rest of the Cake Shop’s clientele, were downstairs in a much larger basement. On any other night Chris would have wanted to go downstairs in a heartbeat, catch a glimpse of the sound system and the venue space, feel and see the concert instead of being detached from it, metaphorically and physically above it.

But this wasn’t any other night, and Chris’s heartbeat was pounding on for something else.

“Never thought I’d be catching sight of you again,” the man behind the bar could barely mask his excitement as Chris eased himself down on an empty vinyl barstool, hoping the bar lights hid the fact that he was blushing. “Officer Richardson.”

Holding up his hands in quick resignation, Chris ducked his head, anxious little teeth biting down onto his lower lip. “No badge tonight,” he admitted; he still had it of course, his precinct shield more important to hold onto than wallet or keys, but unlike this morning it wouldn’t be a different kind of shield to hide behind. “No uniform. None of that officer stuff…just Chris tonight.” He looked up at Blake with a smile on his face, equally shocked and thrilled to see Blake’s golden brown eyes staring into him the whole time.

“Just Chris,” Blake repeated, eyes alight with interest and something Chris didn’t want to call lust because he wasn’t about to unduly get his hopes up.

Taking a daring step forward but far too sober to actually reach out and touch Blake once again, Chris pointed at the bright lettering on the older man’s shirt. “Isn’t it supposed to be ‘Kiss Me, I’m Irish’?” he asked with a smirk.

Blake smiled slowly, corners of his mouth turning up ever so slightly as flirtatious instinct kicked in. “Well, that’s setting my standards a little low, isn’t it?” Chris quirked an eyebrow as Blake rested his hands against the bar, spreading his arms wide; claiming his territory in front of Chris. “I mean, ‘Kiss Me, I’m Welsh,’ but for being Irish I’d hope to get a little more than a silly peck.”

Chris chose to ignore the rise in Blake’s eyebrows and the pursing of his lips into a smug little smirk, and the fact that the older man was openly _requesting_ some compensation for the Irish in his blood to his face. He didn’t think he could take it if he dwelled upon it further. “So you’re really Irish, then?” he quickly steered the subject away from all things concerning kissing and fucking Blake Lewis. “Full-blooded?”

“Nah,” Blake waved his hand at the question dismissively, breaking eye contact with Chris briefly to pour a tall, handsome man with a thick mane of hair a refill at the tap. “I’m one of those Western European mutts…you know, Irish, German…I’ve even got a little Norwegian thrown in there, which completely explains my lifelong dream to become a Viking.” More tapping on the bar; this time, however, it was an indication towards Chris, accenting Blake’s own question to the officer. “You?”

“About a quarter,” replied Chris. “Mostly English, I think…” The topic of genealogy wasn’t something Chris thought was high on the list of bar small talk, but he liked finding out more about this man that intrigued him right from the start, and letting him in turn know a bit about Chris. And it wasn’t like the young officer was going to grow tired of Blake’s voice any time soon. “And some Belgian. Born there, too.”

“Like the waffles.” There came the smirk again, and suddenly Chris wished he had already ordered a drink to hide behind. The alluring glint in the bartender’s eyes felt like it was hypnotizing Chris, making him think that Blake Lewis talking about Belgian waffles was the sexiest thing he’d ever heard. Almost intuitively, Blake cocked his head to the side slightly, questioning Chris in a soft voice. “What you drinking tonight?”

Now this was something Chris didn’t need to be anxious about: he held up his hand matter-of-factly, growing more and more comfortable under Blake’s golden stare by the minute. “Guinness,” he replied; did Blake even have to ask? “Nothing less will do on St. Pat’s.”

The smirk on Blake’s face, the one that in just the right light hid the tiny cut on his lip from the fight earlier that day, diminished; his brows knit together and he sighed, as if he had been sighing the same way all shift. “Yeah, well it’s gonna have to,” he said in a defeated tone; his expression gave off the feeling that he was breaking the news of Chris’s grandmother’s death to him rather than the absence of a particular beer. No one was that upset over alcohol…Chris had the sneaking suspicion that Blake was hoping not to disappoint the officer enough to leave. “No Guinness.”

“No wonder you’re the only bar in Manhattan without a line outside the door.”

“It’s the owner,” explained Blake, and Chris found himself nodding in spite of himself. He didn’t know the Cake Shop’s proprietor by a long shot, but it would figure that anyone who considered the eclectic tastes of vegan pastries, classic David Bowie LPs and wood paneling on the walls would have some moral opposition to Guinness. “British guy – would rather the Cake Shop burn to the ground than stock an Irish beer.” Blake shrugged; the slow business on this, one of the busiest nights of the year for bars all over the city, had hit him hard in terms of tips. But ever since Chris had walked in the door, the issue hadn’t even crossed his mind. “At least his partner convinced him to string up the decorations to bring in a little business for the holiday.”

“Partner? You mean like business partner?”

It took a beat for Blake to gauge the younger man’s sincerity in the comment, and after a quick deliberation in his head he realized Chris wasn’t being sarcastic. “Um…” This time it was Blake’s turn to quirk his mouth to the side; he would have bit his lip to hold back any cynical remarks, but it could have opened up the healing wound on his mouth, and he’d be damned if he bled on a white shirt in front of this man. “…Sure.” Preferring to not speak about his boss’s personal life with a man he had just met earlier in the day, Blake quickly changed the subject. “We’ve got Brooklyn Brewery stout,” he suggested, pointing to one of the tap faucets attached to the bar.

A smile broke out over Chris’s face; though the small strains of Irish blood in him were outraged at the absence, he wasn’t planning on leaving this stool, and this bar, for quite a while. “Stout it is,” he agreed.

As Blake moved over to the tap, upending an empty pilsner glass and filling it with the dark amber liquid, Chris noticed the older man’s demeanor change, from friendly and just a bit flirty to serious, and inquisitive. “So,” Blake started, suddenly deeply engrossed in pouring Chris’s beer and how the frothy carbonation seemed to waterfall down through the glass. “What brings a quarter-Irish, mostly English, slightly Belgian cop into my little corner of the city?”

Blake knew the answer to this question; Chris _knew_ Blake knew the answer to this question. But even so Blake wanted the officer to say it aloud, to make that vague, nebulous feeling between them solid, and out in the open. But to Chris Richardson, the words “Blake Lewis” and “out in the open” were too large right now, too imposing to consider. He froze: he knew Blake wanted to hear those words, the admission that Chris had only come to the Cake Shop for _him_ , but he just couldn’t…not yet.

His reprieve came in the form of a creaking basement door to the side of the bar, nearly wallpapered with years of band stickers and flyers, swinging open and releasing a dissonant blast of music from the venue downstairs. A figure emerged, rather jovial despite the increasingly unintelligible music from the band, carrying in his arms a milk crate full of empty glasses, ruby red lipstick smears and remnants of foam caked onto their surfaces. “Blakey!” he crooned, wide smile aimed at the blonde behind the bar.

“Cookie!” Blake shouted back, grin going wide as he set the full glass of stout at Chris’s elbow. He slapped the other man on the back as he set down the milk crate full of glasses to be washed.

With a free hand the other man wiped a sleeve over his hairline, forehead slick with sweat. “Midnight, man,” he said to Blake with a relieved expression on his face. “Your shift’s on for the stage bar. And good fuckin’ luck down there, it’s like a damn oven and none of those kids know the meaning of the word ‘passable ID’.”

A sudden shot of fear and disappointment ran through Chris’s body, shivering through him like a sudden winter wind. No matter how benign a conversation about family lineage might have been, Chris was still deeply engaged in talking with Blake, hearing the sound of his voice as he chuckled under his breath. None of that could be had if Blake moved down to the basement, closer to the crowd and away from the hum of excitement underneath Chris’s skin. He saw the look strike through Blake’s face as well, similar to a pouting child requesting five more minutes of sleep until the school bus arrives.

But in just a moment that look was gone, replaced with a confident composure Chris was getting quite used to; it was a quality about Blake that he admired, envied. “Chris, this is Cook,” Blake introduced the other man with a wave. “He’s the other bartender here; also makes all the great food for the café, though I wish he’d lay off all the vegan shit.” Blake pointed to the far end of the bar, where a large assortment of dense chocolate cakes, bricks of walnut loaf and cookies the size of Chris’s palm resided near the cappuccino machine. The pastries and coffee seemed to be the Cake Shop’s appearance by day, the storefront equivalent of a superhero: mild-mannered café and restaurant by day, maverick music venue by night. Considering the different roles Chris already knew its bartender had, he found it strangely fitting.

The man aptly named Cook smiled and gave a nod in Chris’s direction; Chris raised his glass in acknowledgement, finding it rather interesting that this man kept his distance when it came to physical contact, whereas earlier in the day Blake had been more than eager to shake Chris’s hand. “Real name’s David, but Blake apparently knows too many of those so it got cut down to Cook.”

“Good thing your name’s not David Rockstar, then.”

When Blake began to introduce Chris to Cook the officer had to admit even to himself that he was on the edge of his barstool about this. Just waiting to hear if Blake introduced him as a friend or something else, something less or even more, to know where exactly he stood in the activist’s mind. Blake’s entire attitude changed, from that of confidence and self-esteem to something Chris recognized far more in himself, a gentle kind of insecurity. Chris wondered if Blake was thinking the same things about the nuances behind this introduction that Chris had been. “Cook, this is Chris,” he said, though his eyes were on the other bartender with a hidden kind of pleading behind them. “We…met this morning.”

“At the parade?” Cook gave a scrutinizing look in Chris’s direction, and the officer took a draught of his beer, feeling uncomfortable under the inspecting eye. He knew what Cook was thinking, could see the wheels turning in his head; it was that silent judging that Chris feared so much, the feeling he could never get used to. But the look quickly passed with Cook’s attention coming back to Blake, the looks the blonde was giving him almost like little laser beams demanding Cook’s attention. Cook seemed to get the message being relayed by Blake’s eyes; he gave the tiniest of nods to Blake, a knowing smile never missing a beat.

“You know what, dude?” Cook gave Blake a friendly pat on the back, then reached down behind the bar for a fresh crate of glasses. “Let me take stage bar duty from you. Better tips down there, anyway.”

“Are you sure?” Blake was going through the motions, Chris could tell: deny the offer first, compliment the generosity of the friend before accepting and inevitably getting what you had wanted in the first place. “You don’t have to, man, I know it’s hell down there –“

“Consider it a St. Patty’s gift.” Cook gave another quick nod in Chris’s direction, and Chris swore the other man had winked. “Nice meeting you, Chris,” were his parting words, and Cook returned to the basement, to the grueling and unpleasant job Blake should have been doing…but instead, Blake was up on the main floor of the Cake Shop, with Chris, fingers happily tapping out their beat.

The question that Blake had asked before the interruption – before Cook had given him his reprieve and allowed him these lazy yet blissful hours with Chris at the bar, filling the occasional drink order but being otherwise undisturbed – was left unanswered for the rest of the night. Though the answer was unspoken between the two men, it was clear to any of the café regulars that there was a definitive and obvious reason Chris Richardson had made the arduous trek to the Lower East Side that night, to a noticeably un-Irish bar on St. Patrick’s Day, and it wasn’t for the vegan fruitcake.

All through the night their conversation meandered and progressed though it felt like no time had passed at all, and Chris soon felt like he had known Blake Lewis his entire life, like a childhood friend, or familiar second shadow. He learned about the origins of the Cake Shop – once a sleepy coffee bar for British expatriates from Bleecker Street, it had new life breathed into it with the addition of the basement venue and the eclectic yet widely popular LPs sold in the back. The two men had bonded over their equal amounts of artistic lust for a high-priced import of _Their Satanic Majesties Request_ , but fell into a quick and heated squabble between the superiority of _Diamond Dogs_ against _The Ghost of Tom Joad_ – the merits and downfalls of each album came into light but neither was considered to win over the other. Blake said Chris would have to listen to them both to get the full impact of the issue; Chris wondered if this was Blake’s invitation to buy the records or to listen to them with _him_.

And Chris learned about Blake’s life, making the alluring and charming activist more than just a caricature and a fantasy in Chris’s mind. Blake was born and raised in Seattle, a different kind of city than New York but a metropolis nonetheless. Chris bit his bottom lip to hold back the comment that mass transportation in his hometown was carpooling in your father’s pickup truck, and the most exotic cuisine to be found was Taco Bell. The activist had visited his friend’s sister in Brooklyn one summer in high school; he saw the chaos of Midtown mixed with the serenity of Central Park, smelled the seaport and the hot dog carts alike, and fell into deep love with Manhattan.

“After I came back from Ireland with my youth choir –“ that, apparently, was another story Blake had yet to tell Chris, but it was thrilling to hear it from him and know, deep in the officer’s mind, that there would be plenty of time in his encounters with Blake Lewis to hear it. “- I had the choice of going back home, studying in a community college and going down a path that just was never meant for me…or to come here.” He sighed happily; it was written all over his face, in that secret little smile Chris was falling in love with, that Blake had made the right choice all those years ago. “My parents were heartbroken about it at first – only child leaving the nest and all – but I call often, visit when I can, and as long as I keep my mom knee-deep in Serendipity chocolates she wouldn’t care if I moved to Mars.”

Chris and Blake were both transplants to the Big Apple, it seemed, though the older man’s transition was far less jarring than the officer’s. He could remember the perplexed looks on the faces of his friends and family when he announced he would be taking his humble local college degree to a police academy, to the police academy in New York of all places. He still felt his sister’s palpable confusion over him admitting he needed to find himself in a place larger than their quaint Virginian town, and felt the strength in his mother’s arms when she hugged him goodbye.

The thing was, Blake already seemed like he found the person inside that he was searching for when he came to New York: he was strong and confident, with friends and supporters at every turn. Chris felt like he was still searching for that something in New York that would bring him the same kind of clarity, that understanding.

“You _can’t_ tell me you don’t drink coffee,” Chris rolled his eyes as he sloshed the dark amber liquid around in his half-full pilsner. He had stopped counting the number of times Blake surreptitiously refilled his glass throughout the night; it was more difficult to keep track of one’s tab when the bartender kept flashing you a winning smile and murmuring in your ear not to worry about the bill. “You work in a _coffee_ shop. You’re never three blocks away from a Starbucks in this city. Christ, you’re from Seattle!”

“I work in a music venue, thank you,” Blake didn’t seem the least bit perturbed by Chris’s line of questioning – in fact, with the alcohol in his own system from the night and the built-up, heated charge between the two men, Chris could accuse Blake of Satanism and he’d still blush coyly and shake his head. “And just because I’m from Seattle doesn’t mean I have java running through my veins. I mean, you’re from Virginia, you don’t love –“ Blake waved his hand out into the air, his fingers extending and weaving through the café like thoughts running through his mind. Chris couldn’t help but chuckle at the concentrated look on Blake’s face. “- country ham.”

The officer tried to hide his grin behind the pilsner glass, but failed to remember the level of beer in the glass and ended up grinning through the clear vessel straight at Blake. “Oh fuck me, you do love ham, don’t you.” The uttered phrase finally broke down Chris’s guard: he reared his head back into a full belly laugh, faintest indications of crow’s feet inching into the corners of his eyes, pearl-white rows of teeth displayed proudly and broadly for Blake to see. The older man’s smile faded, softened; opened up into a mix of serenity and awe as he looked on at the laughing officer like he was the second coming, like a god had graced the threshold of the Cake Shop and chose to drink with him on this night.

“My God,” Blake breathed out, almost in a whisper, as Chris’s laugh died down, leaving only the contented smile behind. “You have…the most amazing smile I think I’ve ever seen.”

Chris didn’t know what to do with this compliment, spoken hushed across the bar through Blake’s lips like a prayer. It was the most forward either man had been the entire night, preferring to ask deep, honest questions about each other’s lives instead of empty flirtations reserved for others. There was a nakedness in Blake’s eyes when he spoke the words, something raw and beautiful that made Chris want to leap across the bar and take him right there. Issues of propriety alone and the nagging worry that he might break something kept Chris decidedly seated on his barstool.

Blake cleared his throat, looking down at the bar, a bit embarrassed that he wasn’t able to hold that observation in, keep it to himself. “Another round?” he asked, fingers wrapping themselves around the slender neck of a bottle of Irish whiskey, the same one Blake had been pouring shots out of the entire night for the pair. “I’m buying.” And when he poured out two shot glasses of the stuff, sliding one across the polished wood of the bar to the officer, he made a point to hold onto the glass, fingers gripping the sides, so that Chris’s touch would graze against them when he went to take the shot. 

He relinquished his hold on the shot glass long enough for Chris to raise the drink to eye level, waiting patiently for Blake to do the same. They toasted, tiny glasses tinkling as crystal connected, the two men’s eyes linked together in a stare that went far beyond a toasting tradition. There was promise in the stare, something deep and carnal that suggested to Chris he wasn’t taking his long train ride back to Bay Ridge that night. After they drained the shot glasses, slamming them back down onto the bar, Chris twirled the glass around in his fingers, toying anxiously with both the glass and the thoughts in his head, until Blake reached out a hand to cover over Chris’s, stilling its movements, and he had no intention of letting go.

The question about Chris’s intentions in coming to the Cake Shop that night wasn’t brought up again until the end of the night, when the young crowd streamed out of the basement concert and Cook looked impatient to turn the house lights on the two men, who were oblivious to the hour. It had been glossed over the entire night in lieu of more pressing matters, like Chris wanting more and more to smooth away the scar on Blake’s mouth with his tongue, or Blake discovering the exact ways to make Chris smile wide, like summer sunshine in Virginia. But now that the evening was winding down and the two were finding fewer reasons to avoid it, Blake asked again, eyes full of honesty and yearning.

“Why’d you come here tonight, Chris?”

Chris licked his lips before pulling his bottom lip between his teeth, secretly pleased with himself when he saw how the act made Blake shiver. “Isn’t it obvious?” he replied, and bravely touched the curves of his inner thigh, but this time not out of nervousness.

He didn’t even need to think of an obscure reason why he didn’t want to take the long and lonely train ride back to Brooklyn; Blake had resolved to take the officer home with him the second he walked in the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Lower East Side](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lower_East_Side) is a neighborhood in manhattan that's close to the Williamsburg Bridge; much like other neighborhoods in the city, it developed as tenements and homes for immigrant families and has recently become an area for starving artists and hipsters. It's a weird mix but it seems to be working, and everyone just eats at [Katz's Deli](http://www.katzdeli.com/), anyway ;-)
> 
> Blake works at [The Cake Shop](http://cake-shop.com/), which really IS a cafe/bar/record store/indie music venue in the Lower East Side. I tried to get the descriptions down as accurately as possible, though I fibbed a few things to fit with the story (like there's only a bar in the basement, but the ground floor DOES have lots of yummy cakes in the dessert display.) I really can't say enough about this place, the vibe is just so indie yet not pretentiously so. Plus ~~David Cook~~ their baker makes a mean pumpkin nut loaf. :-P
> 
> [Brooklyn Brewery](http://www.brooklynbrewery.com/) is a local beer brewery located in...well, Brooklyn (duh). They're best known for their ales, but they also brew lagers, stouts and a few flavored seasonal beers. They're big all around the city, but can also be found in a large number of other states (particularly on the East Coast) and in Canada.
> 
> Blake's mom is in love with gourmet chocolates from [Serendipity 3](http://www.serendipity3.com/), a small yet famous sweet shop and cafe just outside of the 59th Street Bridge. Nowadays you can actually buy their famous chocolate bars and frozen hot chocolate mixes online, but I have a feeling it means more to Dinah that her son send it over himself.


	4. Where the thrush and the robin their sweet notes entwine

It wasn’t that long of a walk from the Cake Shop to Blake’s apartment on Crosby Street – too north to be considered Chinatown but south enough to not be considered SoHo. But Chris was walking blind here in this neighborhood, his business and pleasure never requiring him to wander around in an area mostly populated by import businesses and couture boutiques. The first time Blake took a sharp left around a corner, Chris was still walking straight and barreled right into him; they laughed it off, perhaps a bit too loudly from the alcohol, and the next two times it happened Blake hardly believed it was accidental.

Blake lived in a modest studio apartment that might have been considered a luxurious walk-in closet in other places in the country, but in the limited space of Manhattan it was more than enough. The third-floor walk-up proved to be a bit much for the two men with Chris nearly falling down the stairs and Blake nearly falling up, but they finally made it through their drunken, fluorescent-lit gauntlet and into Blake’s home.

Once Chris stepped into the apartment, shapes and colors hitting his senses the moment he crossed the threshold, it was evident that this apartment belonged to Blake. Electric blue walls accented the height of the old-world ceilings, topped with an elaborate crown molding that had to have been a century old. The large room formed a U-shape, the bedroom and kitchen on either sides of a wall that undoubtedly enclosed the bathroom. Blake’s furniture was a few steps above the Ikea-chic of Chris’s apartment, with a modern yet stylish feel to the décor. The kitchen was a mass of stainless steel and unused copper cookware, the one part of the apartment that didn’t reflect the confident, free spirit that lived there; Blake had complemented it with a delicate dinette set in a wood the exact hue of his skin. In the middle of the apartment, almost greeting any visitors to his abode, was a sharp-looking loveseat curved into the shape of a musical note. Chris could see the whole of the apartment from the front door, and found himself not in the least anxious at the sight of Blake’s bed in the far corner.

Chris saw all of these things, packed them into his mind and filed them into the space reserved for Blake – filling quickly but would never, ever be full. But nothing truly processed, not yet; not while Blake was sliding past Chris in the doorway, bodies making contact between layers of cotton and denim, to set his keys down on the entranceway table. _That’s what was missing from this scene,_ Chris thought with a shy smile as Blake strode to the center of the room, finally completing the image of the apartment in Chris’s subconscious.

“So, here we are,” Blake affected a deliberately terrible French accent, opening his arms proudly to display the room. “La Maison de Lewis.”

Unable to stop himself from grinning, Chris took the extra step into the apartment, closing the door behind him; both men were very aware that they were completely alone, and that Blake’s seafoam green covers looked all too inviting. “C’est formidable,” Chris gushed near-fluently, and the sudden change in format startled Blake into silence, the alcohol doing no good for his clarity. “Mais un peut petit, c’est vrai. Comme son propriétaire.”

“You speak French,” said Blake once he regained his faculties.

“I’m rusty.” Chris’s modesty was epic, and particularly known to anyone who made his acquaintance for more than five minutes.

His honesty, that shy little smile that was hiding so much more that was still unsaid between them…Blake loved it all. “I’ve still got a lot to learn about you, officer.”

“Just Chris,” the younger man reminded him; every mention of his badge, or the precinct he had to report to tomorrow, kept jostling him off track, though with each time the feeling diminished, until the felt like he was repressing the cop in him, and not the other way around.

Blake gave him a playful, small smile, enjoying far too much how it felt just to talk to Chris, to know more about him and to just be in his presence. His eyes drifted lazily over the muscles clearly defined underneath the younger man’s shirt, how the coarse denim of his jeans lay comfortably over his ass. But Blake definitely wasn’t enjoying talking to Chris enough to just do so for the rest of the night.

“I’m being a shitty host,” he said, voice dropping an octave, making the air between them constrict, charged with electricity. “Do you want something to drink? Water? A beer?” Blake took a step closer, towards Chris and, as the other man noticed, a step farther away from the kitchen.

“I’m good.” The lids of Chris’s eyes fell, shrouding his gaze in a veil of delicate eyelashes; he took a step closer to Blake, closing the gap between them fully. All he could concentrate on now were Blake’s lips, slightly parted, the cut on the corner of his lip not ruining their beauty but only enhancing it, like a war wound; a badge of honor.

“Are you sure?” Blake was inching closer now, low voice resonating deep in Chris’s gut. His eyes were already fluttering closed in anticipation; Chris was close, he could feel the other man’s breath mingling with his… “Something to eat? Toast? Piece of fruit? Biscotti –“

His lips were on Blake’s before either man could utter another word: a soft, tentative kiss to Blake’s open mouth, caught mid-syllable but waiting all night for a kiss like this. Chris caught sight of the older man’s face right before his eyes fluttered closed: breathtakingly fragile eyelashes skimming against his fair cheeks, head angling with Chris’s like it was second nature…like they had kissed like this a million times before.

 _No, not a million times before,_ Chris thought, kissing slow and languidly, taking pleasure in knowing they had all night to explore each other. _This feels like we’ll be kissing for a million times after this._

It was like nothing Chris had experienced before: he had been with other men in his life, all in New York, all picked up in the darkest corners of a bar and gone by the next morning, like a 24-hour stomach flu. Chris was taking in everything about Blake that he couldn’t decipher just from their flirty conversations and chance touches, the softness of the press of his lips, the very scent of the older man. This, Chris could tell the moment he had seen this man and traced him through the crowd in the parade, was different than anyone he had ever been with.

Chris was kissing delicately, not particularly passive but keeping a steady pace. He wanted to savor this, Blake could feel it in the way he touched - only on the lips and never going further. He had initiated the kiss but was waiting for Blake to deepen it. Blake was never a man to sit around and wait for something to happen to him – he burst out into the world and took what he wanted, what he felt at times he deserved. He raised his hand up to Chris’s face, stroking the light stubble on the officer’s cheek before laying flat on the other man’s neck, pulling the other man’s lower lip into his mouth, teasing at it with teeth and a tongue.

A soft sigh escaped Chris’s lips; Blake was taking control now, sucking on the tender flesh of his lips, tongue darting out to immediately soothe the skin his teeth would tease. Finally Chris acquiesced, finding it useless to resist the older man; tongue sliding out to meet with Blake’s, feeling the grip on the nape of his neck tighten as he cupped hands around Blake’s shoulder, up over his back, the thin shirt Blake was wearing suddenly way too much material.

Their breathing was coming fast and shallow, gasps of breath between long heated kisses; Chris’s arms wrapped around Blake’s frame, sweeping over muscles and cotton-covered skin, fingers digging in with desire. His tongue crept out of Blake’s mouth, pushing a deliciously disappointed moan from Blake, as Chris traced a trail along the older man’s lips with the tip of his tongue, over the creases and finding purchase in that cut from the brawl this morning. He lapped at the wound, now closed and healing but a still a memory of their first meeting, the first encounter. Chris wished he could have taken away the pain of Blake’s fight, and the pain he must have felt to see his efforts and his dreams begin to unravel at St Patrick’s.

But every kiss Chris was giving, all the tender attention he spend on Blake’s lips, wasn’t satisfying Blake but instead aggravating him. The younger man ignored Blake’s attempted to pull his mouth closer upon his once again, avoiding the flicks of Blake’s tongue, urging him for more. It was a tantalizing thing to see this man in charge, but his pace was achingly slow for Blake. With a growl from deep in his throat he didn’t know he had inside him, Blake gripped tightly onto Chris’s hip and shoulder and pushed with his body, propelling them both against the front door.

He had caught Chris off guard, that was for sure, and Chris hit the door with the broad of his back, grunting from the surprise. But then Blake’s hands were on him, and that spark of surprise was no longer on his mind. When Chris was in control he worked teasingly slow, looking to savor every touch and sensation. When Blake was in control it was just that: his hands roamed over the muscles of Chris’s chest through his shirt, fingers finding the outline of abs, tracing over Chris’s collarbone. Blake’s mouth dominated Chris, kissing with pent-up passion mixed with great skill, like he had trained his entire life to kiss Chris Richardson.

Blake stopped his onslaught of kisses suddenly; he left Chris with his neck craning out, eyes closed and mouth open and waiting, yearning. The sight alone made Blake grin in triumph; made him want to frame that face and hang it next to the rest of his accomplishments, right between the NLG Journalism Association award and his Best Attendance certificate from 4th grade.

Content in ruining that expression only if it meant earning an even better one, Blake pressed his lips against Chris’s, reveling in the low groan out of the officer’s mouth, Chris’s erection pressing into Blake's abdomen through his jeans. Chris’s head snapped back, exposing a long, tanned neck; Blake made a mental note to joke later to the younger man that it wasn’t in the least bit red. Blake wanted to reach out and trace the path of Chris’s Adam’s Apple with the tip of his tongue; wanted to kiss that beautiful neck with teeth, mark him somewhere his police uniform couldn’t hide.

But before all that, he had to get both of their intentions out in the open. “Look at me,” he rasped, low in his throat; Chris had no choice but to comply, and no desire to refuse. Chris’s eyes were clear rings of green surrounding a deep, lustful gaze; his hands rested on the small of Blake’s back, thumbs crawling underneath fabric to sweep over the skin, teasing against the cleft of his ass. Blake’s own eyes were sparkling with lust, taking in every detail of Chris and begging to see what lay underneath those layers of clothing, dying to see more.

“I don’t do bullshit,” he said bluntly, trying to muster up as sincere voice as he could with the throbbing erection in his pants, which was threatening bodily harm on Blake if his conscience got in the way of his sex drive. “I don’t fuck and run, have a little fun under the sheets and then it’s back to the office no questions asked. And I don’t take kindly to being someone’s dirty little secret.” He saw the desire in Chris’s eyes, loved the effortless way their conversations during the night meandered into intensely intimate territory…but he had been there before, seen the way a connection like this could sour. He didn’t want that with Chris…he had to make sure the officer wasn’t going to hide behind his navy blue uniform.

Chris reached up a hand to Blake’s face, caressing the wounded cheek, outlining the bruise with his fingertips; Blake leaned into the touch in spite of himself, eyes closing in pleasure. “I just,” he continued breathily, with less bite to his words than before but still the same conviction behind them, the gravity still there. “The world’s full of false things, full of things that don’t mean anything.” Opening his eyes, taking in the look of fascination and rapt attention on Chris’s face, Blake turned his head keeping his gaze on Chris’s face as he kissed the man’s open palm. “I want something real.”

Chris didn’t say anything back at first, couldn’t, the emotion welled up in his chest like the reservoirs after a summer downpour. Blake cared, wanted to have something more than a one-night stand; it was something Chris never considered with the disposable men that had come through his door before. But the thought of having something with Blake, something beyond a drunken fling, thrilled him to his core. And the part that both comforted him and terrified him was, Blake already knew he was a cop; he wouldn’t have to hide his badge from a nightly visitor for fear they’d find out, use it against Christ in some way. No, Chris liked to believe that Blake wasn’t the kind of person at all to want to harm him like that.

Bowing his head down solemnly, Chris slowly pushed himself off of the smooth plane of the front door, pressing his body flush against Blake’s. He leaned in to touch Blake’s cheek with his, stubble burning like a desirable fire he wished to engulf himself in. “I know,” he whispered, then flicked out his tongue, tracing along the rim of the older man’s ear. “Baby, I know…”

And then Chris’s lips were on his once more, and there wasn’t much more convincing needed. Taking a more forceful initiative, Chris led the two towards the far corner of the room, still cradling Blake’s cheek with one hand, the other securely on the older man’s hip. Chris’s shirt was unbuttoned and discarded by the time Blake’s calves hit the edge of the box spring; his shirt soon followed, Chris no longer requiring the instructions on how to celebrate Blake’s Irish roots. When skin met with hot skin, chest flush against one another, the sensation almost felt like a quick burn to Chris, startling and sudden but not in the least bit unwanted.

Sinking down to the soft covers of the mattress, Blake didn’t even bother to scoot his body fully onto the bed, content in allowing his calves to dangle off the edge. He liked this angle a bit too much, chin tucked to his collarbone; he could look up at the man before him, the bulge straining in Chris’s pants just as much as Blake’s, chest rising and falling with shallow breaths, nipples hard with arousal and fuck, Blake hadn’t even touched him yet.

He reached up for the belt buckle on Chris’s hips; his wrist brushed against the straining denim at Chris’s crotch, causing him to bite his lip hard as Chris’s head tipped back from just that soft touch, that little bit of contact. With a mischievous smirk Blake gave a sudden tug on Chris’s belt, sending Chris crashing down on top of him. At first with the wind knocked out of him Blake thought pulling the larger man down might have been a bad idea, but then Chris’s lips were at his throat, sucking at the tender spot below his jawline, and those thoughts fled his mind.

Chris gave as much attention to Blake’s top half as Blake spent on the younger man’s lower half: kissing, licking the flesh along Blake’s neck and shoulders, nipping playfully at the colorful tattoos he had only glimpsed before underneath Blake’s shirt. Blake wasted no time in unbuckling Chris’s belt, hastily pulling denim over his ass and down, desperate to know and feel. Blake wanted to touch forever, feel the warm, silky smooth skin underneath his fingers all night. His hands roamed over the newly uncovered expanses of Chris’s body, cupping his ass in large, hungry palms, running over the definitions of hip bones, and finally reaching what Blake had been desiring since they had left the Cake Shop.

“Oh God,” the officer gasped against Blake’s shoulder, burying his face in the heated flesh he found there as Blake gripped him, stroking, masterfully toying with him. He ground his hips into Blake’s hand, feeling the older man’s straining cock still trapped inside a pair of trousers. That, he thought as his hands trailed southward along the lines of the older man’s body, was something that needed to be remedied.

“Fuck yeah…” Blake was all too pleased with himself that he could stir up those sounds from the officer just by touching him. He couldn’t wait to see how Chris would react when he did more. “Mmm, bet you’re a screamer, too.”

That got a laugh from the other man; soft yet audible chuckle into Blake’s collarbone. Blake could feel that smile against his skin, even if he couldn’t see it, and by God, if he could make Chris Richardson smile like that again he might consider dying happy. He felt Chris’s fingers on the hem of his pants, pressing like acupressure at the expanse of skin below his navel, and he tried not to make his pleasure evident when those same fingers wrapped around his cock, finally freeing it from its fabric prison.

Blake took that as a challenge; he tightened his hold on Chris, thumb swiping over the head, feeling it jump as Chris yelped. “Bet I could make you scream,” Blake dared, and he began to stroke his hand along the shaft, fast as his hand came down to the base, working its way back up to the head with a torturously slow rhythm.

But instead of issuing that scream he was angling for, Chris hissed out a startled breath. His body tensed above Blake’s on the bed. “Dry…” he rasped, picking his head up and arching his back, still desperate not to lose contact with the other man. The stroking stopped; Blake let go of his hold on Chris’s cock, almost feeling the disappointment shuddering through Chris’s body, and he raised his hand to the younger man’s face, thumb sweeping against panting lips. A flare of lust sparked in Chris’s eyes; out slid his tongue along the pad of Blake’s thumb, his fingers, then down wetly over the palm. He kept eye contact with Blake through all of this, swirling his tongue around the tip of Blake’s middle finger when he was done, and Blake thought he would come undone right then from how unimaginably erotic those green eyes and that tongue actually were.

When Blake pulled his hand down again to Chris’s cock, he took both of them into his slick hand, stroking them together, feeling the blood throb through Chris in more places than one. Chris let out a startled gasp, rocked his hips into the touch, his eyes screwing shut over the sensation. “F-fuck,” he managed, falling down onto his elbows on the bed, on either side of Blake, gaining a better angle for his hips to thrust into the older man’s hand.

“Yeah…” Blake whispered, twisting on an upstroke and squeezing; he caused Chris to shudder, lose the rhythm in his thrusting hips, and Blake loved the power in that feeling. He thrust up, sensitive flesh sliding together, himself biting back a moan. He could feel Chris was close, and he wrestled with the emotions of Chris actually coming to his climax beside him, up against him, and secretly never wanted this moment to end. “Come for me.”

The younger man’s breath stuttered, faltered. Blake could feel Chris’s cock up against his as he sped up his pace. “Blake – oh, _Blake_ –“ he moaned, then cut himself off with a strangled cry, spilling himself out onto Blake’s stomach, over his fist. Blake pushed up, arched his back to capture Chris’s lips with his own, the feeling of the other man all around him finally sending him over the edge. He moaned into Chris’s open mouth, felt his own body tense and then release, bright pops of color like fireworks bursting on the inside of his eyelids.

Blake felt the brush of soft lips against his jawline, his bruised cheek, stealing into the corner of his eye, as Chris collapsed on the bed next to him with an exhausted and satisfied grunt. He groped over on his other side, fingers searching until he pulled his arm back to him, his white shirt in hand. “Worked like a charm,” he joked about the shirt’s slogan, lazily wiping at his chest and stomach; he closed his eyes and smiled deliciously when he realized Chris was watching him, greedy and possessive look in his eyes. He felt a tug on the material wrinkled into his hand; relinquishing it to the younger man, Blake watched out of half-lidded eyes as Chris cleaned himself off.

“Scoot up,” the officer whispered, a request more than a demand, and Blake, who was already feeling the heavy exhaustion that came after orgasm, was more than pleased to oblige. With a soft peck to his lips Chris joined him, after turning out the apartment lights, shucking off his and Blake’s pants fully and pulling the comforter over the both of them. Despite any rules of decorum or propriety, neither man could hide their happiness, shy little closed-mouth smiles brightening into full grins, chuckles and there was that smile from Chris that Blake was quickly falling in love with, dimples tempting and close enough to touch.

“You know,” Blake joked as he pressed a thumb against the cleft in Chris’s chin, fingers dancing against the stubble along his throat. “You could’ve said a little more at the parade than just ‘I support you.’” Blake was smiling but the grin that reached up to Chris’s eyes and spread all over his body was faltering, fading. Blake suddenly wished he hadn’t said a damn thing.

“It’s a touchy subject,” was all Chris would say, and Blake wasn’t going to push it further. Any other time, any other person and he would, he’d rant about how someone’s sexuality – how who they are – could ever be a subject not to be declared, celebrated. But he wouldn’t do this to Chris, not when he was in Blake’s bed, not when the day that started with a chance encounter and culminated in the officer pressed against his body was winding to an end.

Chris continued, green eyes shining in the new darkness of the room, taking Blake’s hand in his gingerly. “But what you said before,” he didn’t need to speak in such hushed tones but he felt it necessary, as if the two men were sharing a secret they were keeping from the kitchen. “About wanting something real. I just wanted to say…” He brought up their hands to his lips, kissed at Blake’s knuckles, whispered against his wrist. “This feels real to me. More real than anything I…than anything.”

Blake’s breath hitched in his throat, the older man quickly filling with emotion. He had no idea that, at the start of the day, he would be at this place, staring into the clearest, kindest eyes of green he had ever witnessed, feeling giddy enough to shout it out the window to all of Manhattan. He smiled, giggled outright as Chris began to kiss higher on his wrist, up his forearm, lips and tongue tracing along the delicate patterns of his tattoos. “Damn,” Blake breathed, feeling his eyes darken with lust as Chris reached the height of the last cherry blossom. “You’re gonna make me hard again…”

“And what would be so bad about that?” Chris asked, and the grin was back again, brightening the room as the officer draped the arm he so affectionately ravaged around his waist, pulling Blake closer. It was the first time Chris went to bed with a man and was looking forward to waking up with his arms around him in the morning.

And they slept, naked against one another, entwined in each other’s arms. Blake’s head rested comfortably in the crook of Chris’s neck, like they had been made out of God’s mold built for two and only now just realizing they found their missing piece. The last thought breezing through Blake’s mind before a blissful sleep overtook him was that, despite all that had happened at the parade, this was a St. Patrick’s Day he hoped never to regret.


	5. I have seen the lark soar high at morn, heard his song up in the blue

Chris woke up the next morning to the brisk sunshine streaming in through the windows, pricking at his closed eyelids until he stirred. He rolled over with a groan, his mind not awake enough to register that his bedroom back in Brooklyn faced the west and thus only received afternoon sun. He batted open his eyes carefully, finally realizing that the pillow he slept on had a different _scent_ than the one back home. The seafoam green comforter wrapped around his legs and the electric blue walls flooded his vision, the room alight in early spring sunshine and the snap of cold that reminded you it was still winter for another two days.

The next thing Chris realized was that he was waking up in Blake Lewis’s bed, without Blake.

He sat up on the mattress suddenly, worry and shock creasing the lines in his face. He was now very quick to rethink the events of last night: visiting the Cake Shop on a whim and a shared glance at the parade; getting drunk enough to believe going home with Blake would be a good idea. Pulling Blake into something that, Chris thought sadly, seemed now to only be a drink-addled fantasy.

Cursing under his breath, Chris stripped away the bed linens from his naked frame, chiding himself for ever thinking he could have something more than meaningless one-night stands…that any man, especially one like Blake, would want that from him. He was slipping himself off of the bed, searching for his discarded clothing to take that dreaded train-ride of shame back to Bay Ridge, when he heard it.

“Hey…you’re up.”

Chris snapped his head over in the direction of the voice: it was Blake, sitting quietly at the modest dinette set, fully clothed and refreshed. His eyes, now framed by black, thick-rimmed glasses, looked up from a laptop, the golden brown instantly warming, smiling; a much better greeting than the spring sun and an empty bed.

“Blake,” he whispered, and the ease of those letters on his tongue melted away the tension the past few moments had built up. The words Blake had said the night before, the ones that seemed more true and naked than their actual bodies had been, ran through Chris’s mind, and he wondered if the older man would ask the same of him now that they were both sober.

The activist smiled at the sound of his name on Chris’s lips, a broad grin that hid no emotion. He clicked a few buttons on his laptop, closing a window, and turned his attentions back to the naked man in his bed. “I had some work to do,” he explained. “And I didn’t want to wake you.”

Chris felt Blake’s bespectacled eyes still on him as he searched for his underwear in the studio apartment, watching his naked frame bend and bow during his search. He was normally not at all an exhibitionist, but ever since yesterday at the parade he wanted Blake to see everything about him, inside and out. He was ready for someone to be let into his life, the life he denied himself in Virginia and tried to hide in New York.

“My God,” Blake said, the lust in his voice impossible to hide. “You’re even more beautiful now than last night. And that’s the sober talking.” Chris locked eyes with Blake; the older man smirked, fire in his eyes mingled with affection. “Usually it’s the other way around, right?”

Chris looked down at his body, the one he had molded and chiseled for nearly a decade, through football, training at the police academy and sheer will. His body was something he feared more than admired, remembering back to the tubby little boy with the least amount of Valentine’s every February. He was desperate to keep himself from ever getting like that again. Others had loved his body, envied it, coveted his muscle and bone. But no one had ever called him beautiful before…and made him actually feel it.

“I see you liked that,” Blake joked, quirking an eyebrow. Chris could feel he was half-hard, cock twitching from the attention Blake’s eyes were paying to his body. Emboldened rather than embarrassed, Chris snaked a hand down to his crotch, giving himself a crude tug and Blake a teasingly erotic show in the process. The squinting smile was in his eyes again, all over his face, the open-mouthed smile that brightened Blake’s morning more than any sunshine ever could.

“You’re not too bad yourself,” replied Chris; he saw his boxers wedged between the wall and the box spring and bent down deeply to pull them out, not even caring to think how they had wandered into that position. “What work were you doing?” he asked innocently, procuring the material and snaking his legs into the boxers. “Didn’t think a bartender took much of his job home.”

The other side of the room became hauntingly quiet; Chris’s gaze was down on the floor, searching for his other sock, Blake’s stock-still expression unseen by everything but the laptop monitor. Chris hadn’t meant anything from the casual way he questioned, didn’t expect the silent treatment from the older man. He tried to push the thoughts away, rationalizing it as just one of those things Blake might have wanted to keep to himself. Perhaps he hadn’t even heard him, Chris thought, instead of allowing his mind to fall upon the concept that the man he just went to bed with was avoiding his question.

Instead, the activist doubled back, responded with optimism and a pleasant smile; this is what Chris saw, not the nervous glances as Blake tipped down the laptop’s monitor until it clicked shut. “I got breakfast,” he said cheerfully, plainly proud of this endeavor. “I don’t have much in the house, don’t keep anything I can’t nuke or eat with my Lucky Charms.” Chris had to smirk at the thought: a grown man living off instant dinners and take-out as only a New Yorker could. He remembered how his roommate could barely boil water before he arrived.

“You didn’t have to –“ Chris began, modesty creeping back in as he yawned the grogginess of morning away. As he turned around towards the kitchen he was confronted with a gleaming silver fork in his line of vision, held by a tattooed arm that still bore Chris’s marks from the night before. On the top of the fork was a warm morsel of golden brown crust, different from the hue Chris found in Blake’s eyes: sunny, warm and inviting, but not nearly as appealing as Blake’s eyes.

Blake prodded with the fork, ignoring the startled look on Chris’s face with the sudden appearance of breakfast in his personal space. “English Breakfast tea – Irish coffee if you’re not a tea man –“ Chris wasn’t a tea man, he took coffee breaks with his partner like a true cop stereotype, but he found it endearing and affectionately appropriate that Blake was, and he wanted to give tea another try just for that reason alone. “And Belgian waffles. English, Irish…and a little bit of Belgian. Got it all down the street; never thought living near a French café would come in handy.”

Chris hardly had the words to speak at the moment: Blake hadn’t woken up, slipped out of bed and Chris’s arms just to finish whatever work he had to do. Not only had he gotten breakfast for the pair – Blake pointed with the waffle-fork to a pleasant little café at the corner, painted in bright blue and orange and advertising French crepes on a chalkboard – but he had picked out items specifically with Chris’s background in mind. He looked down at the café, imagined a dozen breakfasts he and Blake could have on their exterior patio, the romantic dinners where Blake would try to get Chris to try escargot. It was just a tiny little place that looked fairly normal, but to Chris it held the possibility of so much more.

A hand gingerly snaked around Chris’s waist, the fork beginning to circle and sway in his line of vision temptingly. While only fueling his early morning daydreams and not snapping him out of it, Chris leaned forward with relish and took the fork into his mouth, wrapping a sensitive tongue around the piece of waffle, catching a taste of syrup on the tip. The waffle was simple yet decadent, a freshly-baked pastry when Chris had gotten mundanely used to Eggo. He chewed it with great attention to its taste and the feel of it in his mouth: heavy and sweet, with a taste bigger and more real than what he saw in a simple look…like Blake.

The older man watched with rapt attention on Chris’s lips as he pulled the fork away from his mouth, staring intently when the officer’s Adam’s Apple bobbed as he swallowed. Without compunction or hesitation, Blake rose to the balls of his feet, craning his neck to slide his tongue along Chris’s lips, tasting that vague reminiscence of syrup he found there. He sighed contentedly and closed his eyes, pressing in further, deeper, probing the inside of the younger man’s mouth to catch the dizzying flavor of breakfast and Chris.

Moaning softly into the kiss, pulling his own arm around Blake’s waist, Chris closed his eyes in deep pleasure, the thoughts about waking up alone and Blake’s strange excuse of work far from his mind. Blake’s lips pulled away from his, dragging a line of unrushed kisses to Chris’s neck, the younger man dropping his head to the side to provide full access. When his eyes drifted open they caught on something that made his breath hitch with tension, made the swelling desire in his boxers diminish out of regret.

“Fuck,” he groaned at the neon red alarm clock numbers staring back at him. Blake mistook the muttered curse and ground their hips together, mumbling his assent into Chris’s neck. But Chris persisted, disappointed crease breaking into his brow, the frown a devastatingly perfect contrast to his equally potent smile. “Is that really what time it is?” 

“No, I keep it two hours late so I know what time it is in Ghana,” Blake deadpanned, lips still against Chris’s neck, head resting on the other man’s shoulder. “’Course it’s the time, why –“

“I have to go.” Instantly Blake felt the officer’s change in demeanor, in the very warmth of his body. There was sadness, disappointment in Chris’s voice, and as Blake pulled away from his embrace he could see how much Chris truly wanted to be there and waste away the day eating waffles and humping Blake into the mattress, but the activist couldn’t kick the fact that it still stung.

Blake found himself protesting in spite of rational thinking, dark lines of worry creeping into his features. “Stay,” he said, a bit too much like pleading, a bit too desperate for the strong-willed activist’s tastes. “Just a few minutes, please. The breakfast –“

“I…” Chris tried to think of the reasons he wanted to stay, the thoughts of breakfast with Blake and lingering looks and touches over Belgian waffles. But the nagging thought of the badge inside his wallet weighed him down in reality, no matter how tempting the scent of the syrup or the feel of Blake’s hands skirting over his body. “It’s work. I was already off yesterday, can’t just call in sick…” _Or infatuated,_ he thought to himself as he picked up his shirt.

A hand ghosted over his ass, stayed there; slipped underneath the elastic band of Chris’s boxers and squeezed. “Maybe it’s not the breakfast that’d keep you here.” That same hand skimmed over and across, brushing against Chris’s cock, and oh _man_ , was it hard to think of anything else but that hand on him the night before, stroking him, pleasing him like no other hand could. Blake sank to his knees, coaxing Chris’s hardening cock out from the slit in his boxers, his hot breath already making a trail down the other man’s body. He didn’t want to do this; Blake thought he was a little more secure in himself than to get on his knees for a reason like this, but if it kept Chris in the apartment…

Chris tipped his head back as he felt the other man’s breath, his mouth on the head of his cock, just kissing, teasing for now, but with a promise of what was to come. There was nothing Chris wanted to do more in the world than thrust forward, palm Blake’s scalp in his large hands and fuck his ready mouth, but this…this just wasn’t right. He didn’t want Blake to think the only thing that would keep him there was sex; he wanted Blake on an entirely different level, yearned for it, and that level included the activist sitting across from him at a breakfast table, not on his knees.

“Blake…” Chris tried to protest, but realized that it sounded much more like a dreamy sigh. Blake was weaving a trail of chaste kisses against his shaft, working his way to the base, and for the tiniest of moments Chris found weakness, wanted to let Blake take him in and let him forget all about work. But he couldn’t; not this way. “Blake, stop.” The older man looked up with a confused expression on his face; Chris traced a thumb along Blake’s jawline, outlined the boundaries of his bruise with sudden tenderness. “This isn’t what I want,” he whispered, bringing the hand down to cup Blake’s chin in hand, tilting that face up, brown eyes more golden than waffles and more precious than syrup.

The activist was, to say the least, dumbfounded. This wasn’t at all what he was expecting, for Chris to stop him like this. It wouldn’t have been something to be proud of, definitely wouldn’t be a story to share with his friends on how he kept the interests of the handsome young officer – God, especially when he gave a lecture to Danny on sexual integrity nearly every week now – but he was willing. Now, as he gazed upon the sweet, benign little smile Chris was giving him and the honesty in startlingly green eyes, Blake thought back on what he had confessed the night before. “What do you want, then?”

He wanted Blake to know that the attraction he felt for him, the reason he’d be staying a little while longer though it would definitely make him late for work, wasn’t just physical. He wanted to say that he remembered every word Blake had said last night despite the alcohol, how Blake wanted something real, and how Chris couldn’t agree more.

“I want to have waffles with you,” he said, smiling, as he brought Blake back up to his feet and placed a soft kiss on his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The brightly colored restaurant on Blake's corner is called, appropriately, [L'Orange Bleue](http://www.lorangebleue.com), and is actually a French-Caribbean restaurant and bar. They don't serve the Belgian waffles Blake's procured for their romantic breakfast, but they do have Moroccan omlets and savory crepes. It looks like a fun, funky place, perfect as Blake's neighborhood hangout.


	6. A one horse place, a friendly face, some coffee and a tiny trace

His subway ride home was inconsequential; after only three months of living and commuting in New York, Chris realized the name of the game was to keep yourself occupied and never make eye contact. He broke those rules while on duty, of course, but today his mind was too occupied with thoughts of Blake to pay attention to the silent laws of strap hanger decorum. He smiled, sometimes flat-out grinned, his green eyes shining in the subway car as the lingering taste of waffles, tea, and Blake Lewis played on his lips. It was a long ride back to Brooklyn, back to the apartment overlooking shadows of the Verrazano Bridge, but with the memories of last night working their way through Chris’s mind, he didn’t notice at all.

Even on a cop’s salary – perhaps particularly because of it, with what Chris has heard about the starting salaries for the Wall Street set – Chris wasn’t able to afford his own apartment and still have luxury amenities like food, heat, and the occasional “I Love NY” t-shirt sent home to his niece and nephew. His roommate, a firecracker of a woman who worked in the Theater District, was also a transplant to New York by way of a Cooper Union scholarship, and had remained in love with the city ever since. She didn’t seem to be awake yet, despite it being well into the morning, but Chris preferred it just the same. He was already late to work, and definitely needed a shower before showing his face at the stationhouse; he didn’t need an interrogation about his whereabouts last night as well.

The next time he spun himself through a subway turnstile he did so not as Chris but as Officer Richardson, his working uniform not nearly as ironed and stiff as the uniform he wore at the parade but the same identifiable navy blue of the NYPD. Although he and his partner had a home precinct back in Brooklyn, being on transit duty meant never really having a home base: your territory to protect and enforce was the subway cars themselves, a constantly moving neighborhood full of strangers’ faces and foreign rules of conduct Chris never learned back in Virginia. In the new era of “If You See Something, Say Something” Chris handled more unattended packages and forgotten briefcases than actual crimes, but he still liked to think he was making a difference down underneath the bustling metropolitan streets. His partner liked to tell him, if he’s only been on the job a year and he doesn’t still believe he’s making a difference, then he should have never been a cop in the first place.

His partner – a seven-year veteran of the force and a tour of duty in the Navy before that, which immediately gained him Chris’s respect and admiration – said nothing like that on that day, staying oddly silent through their patrol of the subway cars and platforms. Chris knew better than to ask him about it, wondering if there had been an argument with his wife before he left for work, or if his littlest’s asthma was acting up again. The two men were quite friendly with one another – you had to be when you entrusted your life to your partner’s steady firing hand – and talked often about their families, Chris enjoying the simple bliss in the older man’s voice when talking about his wife and daughters. But it was a silent agreement between them that neither man would pry, try to fish for answers or ask questions that dug too deep. Chris liked the arrangement, preferred it actually; it left any questions about girlfriends or the hot New York singles’ life out of their conversations.

That day, however, the silence between them was unnerving Chris; it just wasn’t like his partner not to at least make small talk between stations. Finally by the end of their shift the strange quiet had gotten to Chris; he was starting to think something very lewd and untrue had been written about him and his partner’s wife on the bathroom wall of the stationhouse. Three fare jumpers, four open container violators and a raving zealot later, Chris finally found the opportunity to mention it to his partner, his brows creasing together in perplexity.

“So I’m curious,” Chris leaned against the railing of the stairwell with its decades of peeling yellow paint. “Did you suddenly get a severe case of laryngitis, or did you get a little too close to Mckayla while she was teething and she bit out your tongue?”

The other man started, stumbled; nearly fell down the stairs as he gave out a deep belly laugh. “You’re actually asking me, man?” he guffawed, early-age crow’s feet like fissures from his blue eyes. “I’ve been the one waiting all day for you to finally fess up about your day off.”

His partner’s reaction made Chris even more confused; he shook his head, wondering what the other man could possibly mean by that. It wasn’t like Phil Stacey to be cryptic. “Phil, I don’t –“

“ _Look_ at you,” Phil interrupted as he lifted off his cap to a passing nun in habit, the fluorescent lights of the station bouncing off of his bald head. “You’re practically glowing. I keep looking over at you and catch you smiling, like you’ve got the best secret in the world in that head of yours. You don’t even know you’re doing it, do you.”

Chris had to duck his head from the knowing smile of his partner, the blush in his face rivaling most stop lights. He knew he had been thinking about last night periodically during the shift, his lips curling up at the memories of Blake’s touch, his kiss. He touched his lips absently at the thought of Blake’s own lips on his, Blake’s amber golden eyes watching him as he awoke this morning. What he hadn’t noticed, he supposed, was his own expression whenever his brain turned off the unintelligible train announcements and back to the man he was quickly falling for. Chris grinned in spite of himself; he hadn’t thought he was that obvious, that transparent about anything, especially his love life. But Phil had seen through the veneer Chris always kept up, the walls finally cracking only after one day with Blake.

“So, who’s the lucky girl? You meet her at the parade?”

The officer almost wanted to correct Phil, wanted to point out that he had never explicitly told his partner the gender of any of the one-night stands in the past or how he always gracefully refused being set-up with friends of Phil’s wife. He was nearly bursting from the mounting happiness he felt over Blake, and he wanted to tell someone about it, wanted to share his excitement. But that underlying fear of being found out, fear that Phil might one day let an off-color joke slip at the stationhouse and it would be all over, stopped him. As much as he wanted to pronounce his glee over connecting with Blake all over the city, he wasn’t ready to explain it all to his fellow officers.

Instead he bit his lip into a shy smile, nodding his head reluctantly and avoiding making eye contact with Phil. “Yeah, we met at the parade,” he conceded, rubbing the short, coarse hairs at the back of his head, completely avoiding the events that had led up to their meeting; with seven years on the force, chances were that Phil might have even known some of those officers on duty at the cathedral that morning. “It’s...like I feel lighter somehow. I can’t even explain it, but this…" he smiled now more to himself than to Phil, the thought and the words spoken aloud delighting him. “…this could last. This could be…real.”

Chris was talking cryptically and he knew it; he could feel the pronouns bubbling up underneath his skin, hiding in the grooves of his tongue that had been so deliciously wrapped around Blake’s last night. But Phil didn’t notice, or if he did he made no mention of it; there was no need to question any further, to pry within the depths of their partnership they had not delved into before. The older officer gave him a warm smile and a knowing look, nodding at the descriptions of Chris’s feelings and knowing that they don’t happen with just _anyone._

“I’m happy for you, that’s good,” Phil said as he ascended the steps to return to the stationhouse, cordially slapping him on the back. “That’s…exactly what it’s supposed to feel like.”

“Supposed to feel like what?”

Phil smiled wide, a confident look in his eyes. Chris looked up to Phil for his military service, respected him for the added experience and dedication to the badge, and knew without hesitation to trust his advice on relationships from the long, loving marriage the older man shared. “That’s what it’s supposed to feel like when you’ve met the one.”

***

His roommate, however, was not in the same genial mood.

The moment Chris returned to his apartment from work, not exhausted from a full day but still pleased to be back home, a barrage of darkly manicured slaps and curses fell upon him instantly, the tone reaching his ears far from relieved.

“Fuck! – You – fucking – I didn’t know where – could have been _dead_ – “ Each syllable was accentuated with an exasperated smack to Chris’s head, full of frustration and pent-up energy. It wasn’t hurting Chris in the least, and he had been attacked like this before in his own home – it usually coincided with a particular time of the month but he certainly wasn’t going to point _that_ out to his roommate – but it was certainly unexpected, and not the way he had foreseen this day to continue.

Holding up his hands to block the blows, Chris inched his way into the apartment, causing his raven-haired attacker to back up into the living room, teeth bared into a violet lipstick-rimmed scowl. “Gina! Jesus!” he shouted, vaguely wondering if their neighbors overheard them and ever considered their squabbling part of a lovers’ spat…or if they were trying to call the cops on a domestic dispute. “What did I do?!”

“You’re supposed to _call_ if you’re not gonna be home!” Gina Glocksen’s eyes were fiery and full of power, but they weren’t hateful or holding any malice towards her roommate, her attack more out of aggravation than anything else. She finally stopped assaulting the officer with her hands, keeping them balled into fists at her sides, but her spirit was still there, her voice louder than ever. “How was I supposed to know where you were? If you were okay? Some drug dealer could have taken you out, or a whole gang might’ve gotten their revenge on you!”

Gina was gesturing wildly at this, no longer pressing her anger solely onto Chris but seemingly on the air itself, and through the fury of arms and words the officer could see the hurt and fear that was behind her outburst. “I’m a transit cop, G,” he replied. “I’m not usually the target of gang retaliation.” He would have chuckled at the thought of a turnstile jumper coming back to take his revenge on the officer that had written him a $50 desk appearance ticket, but he felt that Gina might take it the wrong way; that he was laughing at her and her anxieties, and it was definitely not a time to rile her up even further.

Like a quickly burning fire, fast and bright but short-lived, Gina's anger drained from her, the hours of worrying over Chris finally showing in her dark, baggy eyelids. "You're supposed to _call_ ," she repeated, now pouting more than scowling, as Chris walked past her into the living room.

It was a feeling and a paranoia only the very few were privileged to have; Chris didn't, but Gina had been feeling it for months now. It was the deeply emotional, rarely logical, but always understandable fear that came with living with a cop. Always having to know their whereabouts, forever dreading a late-night call from his captain that could be the last.... Gina had roommates before Chris, burgeoning businessmen and fellow artists and even the occasional ne'er do well that always came by their portion of the rent suspiciously. But they never had to worry that the Johnson account would take revenge on the man that put him in prison, or that a routine traffic stop might go horribly awry.

Chris didn't know about that feeling personally but he understood it, sympathized with the people in his life that lived with the fear every day. It was the reason that he called his mother back in Virginia at the same time every day to assure her he was fine; he usually called while on duty so that she could demand to speak with his partner and make sure Chris was alright. And it was why these little tantrums Gina pulled when Chris came home late some nights without informing her had always remained in his memory for the next time. He wouldn't dare make fun of her for caring.

But this time he hadn't called - he knew he should have, but actually informing Gina that he would have been gone the whole night would have been too premeditated, too tangible in his mind, and he doubted he would have wanted to break away even thirty seconds from Blake's voice and eyes last night to even give her the message. And he rarely stayed over somewhere else; Chris was far more comfortable bringing men back to his place, usually when Gina was absent at another party or long asleep, and having them disappear before he could attempt to remember their names in the morning. Both of these factors probably meant that Gina had been worried all night; probably stayed up as late as she could waiting up for him, then fell asleep well into the morning before he had returned to change into his uniform. This time, he definitely needed to say a little more than "I'll try better next time."

"I'm so sorry, G," he said sincerely; regret pulling down the sides of his mouth into a frown. Gina walked over to him sullenly, the pout on her face growing more exaggerated at the panic and exasperation within her before slowly fading with her roommate's presence. Chris pulled her into a comforting bear hug, ruffling her inky dyed hair with a free hand. "I know you worry; it was selfish of me not to call."

He felt the smaller body relax into the hug, the pout on Gina's face now more for show than a true testament to her emotion. "If you make me your famous chicken parmesan for dinner," she bluntly suggested as they drifted out of the embrace and Chris went off to his room to change out of his uniform. "Then I might consider forgiving you for this awful, inconsiderate act."

The hint of Gina's smile followed Chris into his bedroom: the two roommates always joked about Gina's complete lack of skill when it came to cooking, having lived for four years in the East Village on college dining hall food and Ray's Pizza. Chris, whose mother had thought that no little boy should grow to be a man without learning how to feed, wash and clothe himself, taught him the basics of cooking and the many uses of a saucepan, and now after eighteen months in the Bay Ridge apartment Gina finally didn't have to call the corner Mr. Tang's for dinner. Even so, she preferred it when Chris cooked, the aromas and flavors that wafted form the kitchen when he spun his home-cooking magic far superior to whatever she could create. Gina Glocksen was an independent, free-thinking young woman who had been determined to make it on her own in New York since she was eighteen...but even she couldn't turn down a tempting home-cooked meal.

"No can do, darlin'," Chris called from his bedroom, not bothering to shut the door as he peeled off his uniform and the hours of subway grime and toil with it. Gina wasn't one to breach personal space within the apartment - she had far too many roommates before Chris whose tenant morals and ideas of acceptable living conditions were less than savory. So Chris knew she wouldn't try to sneak a glimpse or anything of the sort. "You're gonna have to fend for yourself tonight; I've got myself a dinner date."

Not even the space between them and his back to her could hide the glee in Chris's voice, the happiness over the fact that he could mention to her that yes, he had a date...a fact he wanted to shout out to the world. "Oh?" she asked slyly, crossing her arms in front of her chest, a perfectly-sculpted eyebrow raised to chunky, pink-dyed bangs. "And would this dinner date that you've never spoken about before have anything to do with the fact that you didn't come home at all last night?"

"Maybe," replied Chris with a smile to himself, to the memories of the bed he stayed in last night and the tattooed arms he fell asleep in. He had stripped off his shirt already and began to unbutton the pants while simultaneously attempting to shut the bedroom door with a swing of his calf. He expected to hear the same questions from Gina that Phil had first asked, pleasant but not prying, about who was the mysterious girl Chris had supposedly fallen head-over-heels with in only a day; he expected to blush and nod when she observed how happier he seemed, like a veil of New York cynicism and contempt had lifted literally overnight.

Gina was never one to simply meet a man's expectations.

"So, does this date have a name? Profession? Do I ever get to meet him?" Gina called from the living room, taking a step forward towards the hall that led to both bedroom doors. "I'd sure like to shake the hand of the man that finally made Chris Richardson smile like he meant it."

The door, the unmistaken pronouns, the pants slipping down to his ankles, all led to a startling yelp from Chris’s mouth, a dangerous, teetering loss of balance as he crashed to the floor with a clamor. He certainly wasn’t expecting Gina to have asked those questions.

“Oh God!” Gina’s hands flew to her mouth in shock as she heard the crash, a dull thump of limbs against bare floorboards and curses muffled by material. “Chris, are you okay??”

Chris didn’t know how the hell to respond to that: physically he was sound, he had taken worse spills before and he’d be no officer if he damaged himself over a pair of trousers. But his mind was a complete jumble at that point, he had no idea how to react, to respond to the fact that somehow Gina _knew_ it wasn’t a young, beautiful Irish girl that had caught his eye. “Fuck, G!” he cursed again as Gina rushed over to him, making sure he hadn’t hurt himself in the comical fall.

“Well, I’m right, aren’t I?” Gina crawled down on her black denim-clad haunches, miniscule smirk on her lips as Chris sat up, finally regaining his balance and collecting his thoughts. He still had a shocked look etched into his features, eyebrows creased together and clear green eyes clouded over with anxiety and fear. “You haven’t started banging women, have you?”

With every question Gina asked, Chris became more and more unsure of the answers he was willing to give. He trusted Gina – trusted her with privacy enough to drop his shorts with the door open, trusted her with his life when she routinely tried new recipes – and if there was anyone he felt comfortable with in this city to tell about Blake, about that whole hidden part of his life, it was her. But it was still something he couldn’t just blurt out, couldn’t go from holding this secret inside nearly all the time to gossiping about it with his roommate. “But –“ he stuttered, “how –“

At this Gina’s face broke out into a grin, and she reached out a hand to rub affectionately against the short buzzed hairs atop Chris’s head. “How did I know?” she finished his thought, and Chris, with a darker blush on his cheeks, nodded sheepishly. Gina shook her head; it was almost precious how clueless Chris could be about his own life. “Oh, sweetie…I went to Cooper Union for college. I lived in the East Village for four years. I work in theater. Did you think I didn’t realize you were gay?”

Chris bit his lip self-consciously, nearly hard enough to draw blood; tried his best not to shrug with a shy obliviousness to Gina’s observations. “Besides, our walls are thin,” she said, lowering her voice through there was no one else around to overhear. “And the guys you bring home are not the most modest, I’ll admit.” This caused Chris to grow crimson in the face; he ducked his head as far as it could go, avoiding Gina’s gaze, extremely embarrassed but still smiling to himself.

“Hey.” A black-nailed finger poked at Chris’s ribs; his head shot up, smile fading, feeling more naked in front of her now than simply for the fact that he was still shirtless and his pants were tangled at his ankles. But Gina’s smile persisted, and she never took her eyes away from his. “I’ve known for a while…and it hasn’t changed what I think of you at all.” Her face was open and honest; she settled herself down on the floor in front of Chris’s door, folding her legs Indian-style under her body. “You are Chris Richardson. You’ll always _be_ Chris Richardson.”

There was a world of words behind Chris’s eyes, questions about how Gina knew right off the bat that it had been another man that had so brightened Chris’s day, words of thanks and acceptance and elation. Most of all he wanted to tell her everything, how he still froze when he saw a semi-familiar masculine face out of the corner of his eye when he was on duty, how he was sometimes scared of his own skin…how he’d feel like he’d implode with his secret. He wanted to tell her how amazing Blake’s skin felt against his, how he never wanted to leave that morning.

Gina gave him a snicker, saw how his shoulders seemed to lighten from a load he had been resigned to carrying for the rest of his life, how his fingers itched to embrace her. “Why don’t you change for your date,” she said with a wink. “Then we can talk about this guy that’s knocked you off your feet. I’ll put up some coffee.”

Finally sighing a relieving breath, allowing himself to release the tension he had been feeling ever since Gina mentioned she knew his secret…the tension he had in his body for years now. He wasn’t ready to release it all to the world, not ready for the questions and the stares from his fellow officer or informing his parents that they should hold off on their plans for a proper wedding at his childhood church back home. But he was ready to be comfortable about himself in his own apartment, talking with his roommate about the intriguing and exciting man that was already altering his life after one day.

“How about I make the coffee,” Chris said with a genuine grin, remembering the coffee stains on the ceiling the last time Gina had tried to brew a pot.

***

“Blake. Blake. _Blaaaaake._ ” Gina sipped her mug of French Roast and repeated the name, deep in thought. Chris thought fleetingly how he didn’t like the way she said the activist’s name, how she blurted it out like a common noun without knowing the man behind it. “The name sounds familiar, but I can’t remember where. What’d you say his last name was again?”

Chris took a deep gulp of his coffee, allowing it to settle deep in the back of his throat so that he could blame the blush in his cheeks on the drink and not on his thoughts. “Lewis,” he replied after a moment. “He’s lived in New York about oh, seven or eight years now?” It was possible that the paths of his roommate and his new flame had connected during their respective years in the city, but Chris hadn’t given it much thought. Back home the familiar winding roads of his hometown always led one to a friend; here, in a metropolis full of gridded streets and parallel avenues that never met, you could spend a lifetime and never meet the same person twice.

Gina nodded and repeated the last name now, with different intonations and accents to see if any of it jogged her memory. “I worked with a guy named Lewis once at an internship,” she said, snapping her fingers. “He works on Tony & Tina’s Wedding now, I think. Name wasn’t Blake though, but he sure was short. Think they’re related?”

“There are a lot of Lewises in this city, G,” smirked Chris as he drained his mug. Gina had lived in New York for quite some time and was convinced she had already met, through various degrees of separation, everyone Chris came into contact with in the city. It had only happened once – when he introduced Intelligence Agent Tabaldo to her at their housewarming party she surmised she had slept with an old roommate of A.J.’s and never called him again – but Gina was determined at times to believe the people of New York wasn’t as alienated as they would have the world believe.

Still mumbling on that she could swear she’d heard that name before, Gina continued, drinking in Chris’s unavoidable smile as much as her coffee. “So he’s a full-fledged, rah-rah gay rights activist? That’s rather new for you.” Chris turned pink and nodded; he would have called it even ironic that he could meet someone so in touch with their sexuality, with who they were, when he couldn’t even correct his partner when he thought he was falling for a woman. But there was so much more in the affection he had for Blake than what he did in his spare time: it was his confidence, the ease with everything he did, like he already owned this world and was moving out to claim it. It was the passion mixed with gentleness in his eyes; it was the contrast of his “Fuck Me I’m Irish” shirt and the soft, mewling way he had sighed when Chris touched his lips with his own.

“It’s different,” Chris conceded. “I…don’t want to get my hopes up, we only just met yesterday. His friends don’t seem too happy with me being a cop, either.” He looked back to the previous morning, to Danny’s accusations and the inherent distrust of the police force to which Blake must not have been immune.

She waved her hand dismissively at Chris’s negative thoughts; she wouldn’t let him create some non-existent barrier between himself and happiness with a man that was obviously affecting him, wouldn’t let him hide behind his badge. “His friends can go suck a fuck,” she retorted, to which Chris chuckled and snorted in response; Gina waited for the requisite muttered “How does one suck a fuck?” from her roommate before she continued. “What matters is what he thinks of you. He already knows you’re a cop, and he’s fine with it. Frankly, I could use someone else in the city who’s gonna worry about you as much as I do, take some of the neuroses away from me for a change.”

Chris blushed, thoughts of Blake waiting up for him after a long shift, warm body asleep and ready for him in Chris’s bed as he arrived home running through his mind. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he said, insecurities creeping into those thoughts, stitching worries into that image, and the concrete memories of waking up that morning cold, naked and alone. “I mean, I just met the guy. I know how I feel, but I can’t tell you if he feels the same way.”

A soft buzz made Chris start and jump in his seat at the kitchen table. His phone, he realized quickly, and pulled it out of his pocket to find a cheerful text message relieving his doubts. It had been sometime between the last bite of waffle and the lingering kiss goodbye when Blake stole away Chris’s phone, holding the little blue thing hostage underneath the table and out of sight to enter in his phone number. The phone’s ID only said “B” but the officer immediately knew who it was, the message clearly displaying the words “ **We still on 2nite** ” without any question mark; a statement, a declaration, more than a query.

“What was that again?” Gina said with a sly smile; she didn’t need to see the actual text to know who it came from or what could cause that unstoppable smile on Chris’s face. Without hesitation the woman reached over the table with both hands, one pulling Chris’s half-empty mug of coffee away from his nervous tapping fingers and the other grasping them reassuringly in her palm. “I’m keeping you, aren’t I? You’ve got a date to get to.”

The officer looked at their hands together vaguely wondering how after so many months of living with Gina she had been fine with the living arrangements, how she somehow knew to wait for this moment to reveal that she knew. That she’d have to interrupt Chris to stop him from going on about Blake for hours, and that it would be Blake, and not any of the other men he had been with and never looked back, that would make him this excited over a simple dinner date.

Before he could say a word to her, before he could thank her for being there and understanding, or asking in that polite Southern way he perfected years ago not to mention this to his parents, Gina had closed the space between them, walking around the kitchen table and planting a friendly kiss on the top of his closely shaven head. “I’m here to talk about this whenever you want, sweetie,” she said soothingly. For months Gina Glocksen had been the officer’s roommate, and they had quickly grown to become friends. Now, she was becoming something Chris never thought his place in the world would allow him…a confidante.

“But if you keep stuff like this to yourself again,” she warned with a smile against his head. “I’ll punish you by making my tuna casserole again.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chris lives in the [Bay Ridge](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Ridge,_Brooklyn) neighborhood of Brooklyn, which is in the extreme southwest of the borough (for those that don't know, New York City is made up of 5 boroughs, only one of which is Manhattan - which borough kids like myself grew up to call "the city".) It's a quiet neighborhood that has a strong Italian background, and is right next to the water and has impressive views of the Verrazano Bridge. There are a lot of police officers that live in this area as well, so I thought it'd be a good place for Chris to live. :)
> 
> I couldn't find any resources on "subway etiquette" but anyone who's been on a train knows the rules, and no one gets this more than New Yorkers: don't look anyone in the eye, don't strike up conversation or make unnecessary noise, walk to the middle of the train and let other people off, etc. It's a whole different code of rules when you go into the subway, and you learn it quickly when you travel it every day.
> 
> [Cooper Union](http://www.cooper.edu/) is an extremely small arts and sciences college in the East Village of Manhattan. They specialize in fine arts, architecture, and engineering, and all students are under a full-tuition scholarship so the acceptance rate in the school is SUPER small; it would mean that Gina had to be extremely gifted to get in.
> 
> To differ from Chris's [ceremonial uniform](http://nymag.com/daily/intel/20070522nypd.jpg) he wore in Chapter 1, he wears something that looks [like this](http://barcshelter.files.wordpress.com/2007/04/465520853_2a55ab56d2.jpg) when on duty. Transit cops are much more prevalent in the post-9/11 age, where random bag checks are common in subway stations.
> 
> The MTA has recently made an ad campaign titled "[If You See Something, Say Something](http://www.mta.info/mta/security/index.html)", urging straphangers to report suspicious activity or unattended packages to prevent terrorism. The TV show _30 Rock_ poked fun of this marketing campaign in a recent episode about Homeland Security (guest starring a brilliant Fred Armisen, btw).
> 
> Gina (and Chris's) "suck a fuck" line, for those that don't know, is from Donnie Darko. I remember the line way more than I remember that it comes from that movie XD


	7. Have you ever been in love, my boys?

“Gay. Gay. _SO_ gay.”

“Dammit, Noriega!”

“Danny, do you think you could spend one afternoon where you don’t set back the gay rights movement a decade or two?”

The teenager flippantly ran his fingers through dark hair. “I’m just sayin’,” he waved his hand dismissively at the reflection of the dark-skinned man in the full-length mirror. “The shirt has _ruffles_ , it’s gay. Unless that’s the look you’re going for, Brandon.”

The figure in the mirror cocked an eyebrow, his fingers absently traveling over the soft, raised material lining the hems. Yes, there were particular elements of style to the shirt and one could assume they were ruffles, but that was only to the uneducated eye. “You mean, gay as in stupid, or gay as in my shirt has sex with other shirts with ruffles?”

It was late in the day on Tuesday at the modest living quarters in the Rogers-Young household – Brandon used to joke that placing his name second made the couple sound more like a third-rate pornstar – and the usual suspects were sprawled out in the bedroom painstakingly evaluating the dressier side to Brandon’s wardrobe. He had already tried on five button-down shirts, four sophisticated turtlenecks, and two sweaters – twice – before they had gotten to the current ruffled selection.

“Can we please go out and do something?” Danny moaned, dropping the magazine in his hands and rolling over onto his back against the Egyptian cotton sheets. None of the other men in the room – Brandon at the mirror, David sitting with his back against the wall on the plush ivory rug, Blake at Brandon’s desk overflowing with paperwork – paid him any notice, all far too comfortable with Danny’s mood swings to care. “This is hardly mentoring.”

“We’re off the clock,” Brandon reminded him, turning from side to side to scrutinize the shirt from every angle.

“Which means you don’t have to be here, either,” David said, playfully kicking the boxspring. The three men had first met Danny through the LGBT youth mentoring program Brandon had founded to reach out to inner-city kids dealing with their sexualities in communities where neighbors would be more open to Danny being a drug dealer than being gay. It was hard to imagine this cranky, opinionated teenager was actually the more subdued, improved side to Danny Noriega: when he first entered the program, the boy was near impossible, picking fights with anyone that looked at him sideways and oftentimes losing. In the past few months the three men – David once dubbed them ‘Three Men And A Baby” but Danny quickly corrected him with the sequel’s movie title – had softened the teenager, gave him reasons to believe his sexuality was something to celebrate instead of fight against. And in turn Danny looked at these three as allies; friends.

Not friendly enough, however, to suffer through another of Brandon’s wardrobe changes. “Just go naked, I’m sure you’ll impress his boss then,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Yes, because getting arrested for indecent exposure is exactly the impression I want to make,” the older man joked. Brandon was meeting with his boyfriend’s boss for the first time – new merger, new partner in the firm, another ass to kiss – and Brandon wanted to make sure everything was perfect, from the volume of his hair to the way the pinstripes in his suit matched his lover’s eyes. It was the reason for this impromptu fashion show, and the most recent cause of Danny’s ire.

Blake hadn’t been paying attention to any of this, hadn’t given the yay or nay on any of Brandon’s outfit choices or made comments regarding Danny’s need to be entertained. His eyes seemed transfixed on the stack of papers on the desk but his mind was elsewhere, still playing over the events of the past day in his head like old reel-to-reel. How Chris had first sought him out, saved him at the parade…then came to his place of work, stayed until closing just to spend the time with Blake. How the feel of his naked body against Blake’s, hot and sated and inviting, had taken the older man’s breath away. How he didn’t even need to look at a clock to know how many minutes still stood between this moment and seeing Chris again.

He heard a snicker in his direction but didn’t register it; he was wondering instead if the Indian place on Lexington Avenue required a reservation, if Chris even liked Indian food. “Speaking of arresting people…” He knew it was David, couldn’t be anyone else _but_ David, and although Blake was mentally revoking that drink he owed him from yesterday, the activist couldn’t keep himself from smiling.

Picking up on the change in conversation, Danny rolled over onto his stomach, propping himself up on his elbows. “Oh, the _cop_ ,” he cooed, eyes suddenly gleaming with interest.

Brandon perked up an ear at the conversation going on behind him. “What’s this I hear?” he asked, already knowing this gossip was big from the rare blush on Blake’s cheeks. “Blake, something happen at the parade?”

“Shorty found himself a _delicious_ -looking man of the law, I’ll tell you,” David’s voice dripped with envy, using the nickname for Blake his colleagues at the club had given him when he paid visits to David at work. David had set eyes on Chris at the parade, saw the raw potential underneath the navy uniform, but gave up claim to the friend who had seen him first – and quite graciously gave it up, if he could say so himself. “Tall, tanned. _Ripped._ Hottest green eyes you ever damned see –“

“I’d probably have to disagree with that,” chuckled Brandon.

“He stepped in when those assholes started messing with us,” finished Danny, who, despite being rather unimpressed with the officer, knew a salacious topic when he heard one. “I didn’t find him all that hot,” he claimed. “I prefer my men blond.”

“And anorexic,” quipped David, and received a choice finger from Danny in response.

As the two men squabbled, Brandon looked over at Blake from the mirror, watching the emotions unfold over his face at the memories of the St. Patrick’s Day parade. He saw the hint of an innocent, blissful smile across Blake’s lips, watched the quirk in his eyes that told the older man he was holding back a full-on grin. This officer had put Blake in la-la land for a good part of the afternoon. Brandon’s eyes asked without words, the smile in his eyes doing the work for him; Blake nodded in response and blushed, and Blake never blushed, not even when the stripper who had given Blake a lap dance on his birthday last year turned out to be his dentist’s son.

“He came by the Cake Shop last night,” was all the information he gave at first; Blake didn’t want to hold back on his friends, and God knew he wanted to tell the whole world how elated he had been since last night. But he also knew the process, the digging for information, the quick and oftentimes scathing survey of the man, like he was a business acquisition. It was a routine he and David frequently shared, as Danny tended to boast big but had never done anything serious sexually, and Brandon was blissfully boring in his monogamy. But this time, Blake didn’t want to joke or analyze; he wanted to savor all of the little things he learned about Chris, wanted to store them away in the hope chest of his mind, all for himself.

Brandon’s face broke out into a grin; it was rare to see Blake pull into himself, to keep a part of himself from the outside world. “Do you like _like_ him?” he teased as he selected a tie from the dresser drawer.

Even at the prospect of talking about Chris, Blake’s face shined; he picked up a piece of junk mail on the desk to avoid meeting Brandon’s eye, noticing that Brandon’s boyfriend may already be a winner. “He’s sweet,” he said so softly Brandon had to strain to really hear. “Funny. Likes classic rock and old movies. Born in Virginia and came here to join the police force. Pisces.” He heard Brandon laugh under his breath at the description, which was decidedly devoid of details on Chris’s physical appearance. “Has a bulldog who lives with his parents ‘cause his apartment won’t allow pets.” Blake could see from the corner of his eye that Brandon was nodding, watching the activist intently, gauging his reactions. He could always count on David for help on dishing the dirt on the latest sexual conquest, but Blake went to Brandon when he wanted to talk about relationships…about something real.

“He sounds different for you,” Brandon noted carefully as he saw the confidence fade out of Blake’s demeanor. Brandon was Blake’s oldest friend in New York; the older man had seen him go from a curious shutterbug to a rampant clubber to the man he was today. Blake liked things loud and up-front, he liked to know exactly where he stood with another man; a polite, sun-warmed country boy hardly seemed like his tastes. “He sounds good, don’t get me wrong! Just…different.”

The warm smile in Blake’s direction was comforting; he could always count on Brandon for that. And, similarly, he could always count on Danny for this. “Did you fuck him?”

Blake balked at the blunt question; Brandon let out a short, barking laugh, early wrinkles showing on his face as he grinned and David launched a pillow in Danny’s direction. The question was abrupt but not completely surprising; with any other man Blake would have given all the tawdry details by now, the bedroom secrets and irritating reasons why he wouldn’t be seeing the other man again. But he wanted to keep last night between Chris and himself – the tender touches, the kisses they shared...they were not for Danny’s ridicule or David’s scrutinizing. “I’m not going there,” Blake warned, holding his hands up to emphasize.

Danny, as always, was unfazed. “That means he fucked you.”

“Real classy, Daniel,” Brandon rolled his eyes as he fixed the tie around his neck.

“If Blake doesn’t want to talk about the guy that made him so damn giddy last night that he’s still euphoric,” David rested his arms on the edge of the bed, chin coming down on his folded fingers, watching Blake with an honest and accepting eye. “Then that’s what he’s gonna do. We don’t have to know every detail.”

The activist flashed a thankful grin at David; it was nice to know the other man’s integrity as a friend outshone everything else. “A gentleman never tells,” he said with a wink, to which Brandon mumbled something off-color about “An Officer and a Gentleman;” the irony of which was not lost on Blake. Taking Brandon’s low whistle and the smirk on David’s face as a challenge, he cocked an eyebrow as he divulged, “But I will say…the breakfast I got for us this morning was…heavenly.”

A hoot and a holler came from Danny on the bed; David clapped his hands together and laughed, mumbling “Now _that’s_ what I’m talking about.” Blake was used to this, to the stream of commentary on the hookups and relationships the four young men would have, but in this particular conversation the activist was practically beaming, the memory alone of Chris’s face as he saw the breakfast laid out before them this morning keeping Blake elated for the whole day.

“Breakfast,” observed Brandon, a quirky, friendly smile on his lips. “Sounds promising. Are you seeing him again?”

Almost instantly Blake was nodding, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically than normal but he _was_ , admittedly, more excited about their upcoming date than he had been about anything in recent memory. “We’re going to dinner tonight,” he said, and he could almost feel his face perk up, brighten, as he spoke about his plans with Chris. “So I’ll be seeing him…” Blake took a quick check on his phone, slipping the Sidekick out of his pocket and flipping it open, neurotically wondering if he had gotten any stray text messages without feeling the phone’s vibrations in his pants. “…the moment he gets here from Brooklyn.”

“Brooklyn?” Danny immediately changed his tone of interest, waving a hand affectedly at Blake. “Too far – I can’t think of any ass that’s worth going to _Brooklyn_.” And with that Danny opted out of the rest of the conversation, returning to the tabloid magazine by his side and finding articles about Jake Gyllenhaal more intriguing than what his friends were discussing.

David, who had grown up in the Crown Heights area of Brooklyn and knew the exact worth of a man that would commute for romance, ignored Danny’s statement and continued on with a newfound respect for Blake’s new flame. “Just don’t take him to Madras, Shorty,” he joked, shooting Blake a wink.

“Oh God, Madras,” was Brandon’s comment, and he laughed along with David as he reached for his suit jacket.

The confidence in Blake’s demeanor deflated, his smile drifting off into a confused frown. “What’s so wrong with Madras? I _like_ Madras,” Blake protested, feeling a sudden flare of affection for the Indian restaurant.

“We _know_ you like Madras. _Everyone_ knows that, and that’s your downfall.” Brandon was speaking matter-of-factly to Blake, and although Blake had no concept of this being true he noticed David’s head nodding up and down in agreement. 

“The place practically puts out ads saying that,” David joked, spreading his arms out mimicking a Hollywood marquee. “’Madras Cafe: Blake Lewis’s go-to hookup restaurant since 2004.’” The olive-skinned man grinned at his own snarkiness. “They should put that right next to your bylines, it’d be a great advertising tie-in.”

“Any guy you’ve ever taken a second glance at, you’ve taken there,” explained Brandon, as the confusion on Blake’s face was quickly growing to contempt. “It’s beginning to become your ‘thing,’ and with the way you’re talking about this guy, I don’t think you want him just to be one more in a long line of ‘things.’”

It was true, Blake realized, the realization hitting him like a delicately calloused thumb pressing against his chest. He wanted to go someplace special with Chris, make this – only the second night together though it felt like he had known the officer for ages now – an occasion to remember. He wanted the conversation and the connection between the two men to stand out more than the potato samosas.

“What about The Townhouse?” suggested David, and Brandon snickered to keep the bedroom free of catty comments about the restaurant being well-known as David’s favorite date venue.

Blake’s attentions dropped to the paperwork on the desk, his fingers finding a nervous, unstable beat against the mahogany, avoiding David’s idea. The Townhouse was an enjoyable enough restaurant in the upper East 50s, with a mild yet agreeable menu that had been pleasing regular customers like David for decades. But the decidedly western cuisine wasn’t the only difference between The Townhouse and Madras: perhaps the other reason that David Hernandez spread the good word about The Townhouse was that it was a well-known gay establishment years before having such a title was considered trendy. The upscale restaurant had never particularly been Blake’s premier gay institution, though he had been brought there on a number of occasions to appease David’s never-ending quest for an older, independently wealthy paramour. The atmosphere of the Townhouse was unavoidably set for just this purpose, and Blake had a feeling that Chris would appreciate it even less than he did.

“I really don’t think he’d be interested in that place,” Blake laughed it off, but he quickly grew silent as he noticed the smile fade from David’s face with a dawning realization.

“Oh fuck…Shorty, _fuck._ ” David’s face had dropped to a look of shock and remorse, his eyes a clear warning to Blake that he had let the wrong thing slip. Shaking his head, David pushed himself away from the edge of the bed, his back hitting the wall behind him with a deadened _thump._ “He’s not out, is he?”

A nervous, uneasy lump formed in Blake’s throat as his eyes drifted over every inch of the room that was not occupied by David Hernandez’s accusing stare. This certainly wasn’t a topic Blake wanted to discuss – the happiness he had begun feeling ever since Chris walked through the door of the Cake Shop last night had been mounting, and he didn’t want any cracks or fissures ruining that feeling. He and Chris hadn’t even spoken about it, though Blake had taken a few educated guesses from the mixed look of fear and fascination in Chris’s eyes at the parade. But David, it seemed, was not about to let the topic slide; when it came to being secure with one’s own sexuality, he very rarely did.

“I can’t believe this,” said David, throwing his hand up in the air, exasperated. “You’ve fallen for a fucking closet case.”

“It’s not –“

“Like fuck it’s not.” Even though Blake wasn’t very happy with what David was telling him, of this animosity towards something fundamental about Chris’s current life, he could see the sincerity and care in David’s eyes even now as he spouted out curses towards Blake. “You’ve been through relationships like this; _I’ve_ been through relationships like this. Remember that stockbroker, Adam – and the time we met him and his  wife in Trader Joe’s? Or the personal trainer who would only fuck you if you let him call you Felicia?” Blake winced as David had begun listing the very tangible reasons why he didn’t want this budding relationship with Chris to start on a bad note. “Did one of them ever promise you they’d come out in the open with you and actually follow through with it?”

The words hurt, though Blake knew David did not mean them to, and he felt his hands curl up into fists at his sides, short-clipped nails digging into the flesh of his palms like David’s accusations digging in elsewhere. “You shut the fuck up,” he blurted out, though his words held no bite to them, were more like a plea to David to stop poking holes in his image of a future with Chris.

David narrowed his eyes at Blake, shaking his head sadly. “Look at you,” he said solemnly. “You’re perfectly content to have your heart broken.” Both he and David had experiences with men in the past who were less than enthused about committing to a relationship with another man, and each time they swore they’d never make the same mistake again. Blake felt like he had been used like training wheels for those men who later decided not to ride at all. David took being closeted as a personal attack on the life he lived, the courage he had gathered when he had come out. “You know where this story goes, Blake…it never ends well.”

“Hey,” came the rarely stern voice of Brandon from across the room. “Sometimes, it does.”

Blake breathed a sigh of gratitude at Brandon’s save; he needed someone on his side in this debate, on his and Chris’s side. Brandon’s partner wasn’t necessarily closeted when they met many years ago, but he certainly wasn’t making appearances at the Gay Pride Parade, either. That had all changed when he met Brandon: now, he was proud to walk down any street in Manhattan hand in hand with his boyfriend, and take him to a possible career-altering dinner with the new partner in his firm.

“You guys talking about Madras?” _Speak of the devil,_ Blake thought: into the bedroom walked the tall, statuesque young man Blake had known these many years in New York as the love of Brandon Rogers’s life. Ace Young wasn’t close with any of the three in the bedroom with Brandon – Blake and David found little in common with Ace’s nouveau-yuppie lifestyle, and Danny got huffy around anyone wearing a suit – but they were friendly enough, particularly because he was a non-negotiable part of Brandon’s life. His attire that day was no different – navy blue suit that was undeniably Armani, long chestnut hair pulled back into a ponytail for business occasions – and as he walked in Blake couldn’t help but think of the couple as picture-perfect, an Ozzie and Harriet for the new generation. “What, does Blake have a date again?”

The conversation fizzled and grew silent as Ace stepped in, David’s argument losing some steam as the physical representation of the contrary breezed by him towards Brandon. “You look amazing,” Ace said immediately to Brandon, taking in the other man’s suit and appearance, flecks of lust and affection evident in his green eyes. Blake always found it uncanny that the couple had been together for so many years now, been through so much, and yet still acted like newlyweds around each other. Brandon was practically beaming, a dark blush playing underneath his chocolate-toned skin, and he breathed out a sigh of relief and comfort as Ace slid an arm around his waist and tipped his chin upwards for a kiss.

“Remember, we’re meeting Mr. Weiss at Mesa at seven; the reservation’s under the firm name,” Ace reminded Brandon with a warm smile. “I’ve got to run to the office real quick, drop off a file, but I’ll meet you there.” His tone grew softer, meant only for Brandon. “You didn’t have to do this for me.”

Entertaining pompous old lawyers was certainly not Brandon’s idea of a Tuesday night well-spent – he preferred watching reality TV and making slow, passionate love to his non-pompous lawyer at home – but he knew it was Ace’s, and that making a good first impression on the new partner could mean very important things for his own partner. He wanted everything to be perfect for Ace – he wanted to be perfect for this night. “Of course I didn’t,” he replied with a smile. “I wanted to do it.”

Everyone in the room ignored the dramatic sigh and the gagging noises Danny was making on the bed – the teenager found Ace and Brandon’s relationship to be utterly boring, and while he had nothing personal against the couple he preferred not to witness them together first-hand. David gave the pair a tight-lipped smile, soured not over Ace and Brandon’s relationship, but over the fact that his life was currently devoid of that feeling, that joy. And Blake watched with an envious fascination, seeing the soft touch of Ace’s hand to the small of Brandon’s back, the way their eyes stayed in contact through everything. Ace was the one topic Brandon never backed down on, never held back; he was so deeply in love, they both were, and he wanted to let everyone know.

Blake wanted that, yearned for the warm, complete feeling before he ever realized what gender he wanted it with. He wanted to wake up next to the same person every morning and greet them with a kiss; he wanted to think about the years ahead and not be able to do so without that one man in his life. He wanted to miss someone; he wanted to be missed. And now, he realized, he wanted all that with Chris.

With a quick goodbye to the three young men in the room and a kiss to his boyfriend that was far more passionate than chaste, Ace left the apartment for his office. His mind was flip-flopping between positive talking points for the impending dinner conversation and how badly he wanted to get Brandon out of that suit when the night was over.

Brandon watched him as he left, eyes drifting up and down the taller man’s body, his mind always barely able to catch up with his heart on the concept that he could love one person as much as he loved Ace. He heard a sigh somewhere in the back of his mind and thought he had made the sound unwittingly, as he was wont to do when watching Ace Young leave a room. But it had come from somewhere inside the bedroom and not from himself; he turned around to face his friend at the desk, eyes wide and glassy, and full of longing. His fingers played with the cuff of a hoodie, danced absently against the inked branches and roots on his wrist, as if pretending it was someone else’s hand touching him.

The younger man caught Brandon’s eye almost embarrassedly, like he had intruded upon a private, intimate encounter between Brandon and Ace and he was an outsider, a child peering into the window of a candy shop. “I want that,” Blake found his mouth forming the syllables despite himself, and Brandon knew exactly what he meant. Blake wanted neither man in the couple but the physical and emotional act of _being_ a couple; he wanted to be so in love he couldn’t even define it anymore.

Breaking out into a comforting, sympathetic grin, Brandon mouthed back to Blake in a sign of silent solidarity. “I know.”

The buzz of his phone startled Blake out of his trance; finally he was receiving his cherished text, finally Chris had arrived from the borough Danny refused to even acknowledge. Unable to hide his glee, Blake flipped open the Sidekick to see the message – short and neutral to the untrained eye but Blake saw a world of subtext between those words – of Chris asking where Blake currently was.

Blake began to type back to him, the corners of his eyes even revealing the sunshine-bright smile that was spreading all over his face. He responded that he was at a friend’s house and that he could meet Chris anywhere in a matter of minutes – come hell, high water or gridlock, he thought to himself but left that out of the text. “ **Where r u?** ” he tacked on to the end, and waited for the thrilling buzz of a response.

“Don’t take him to Madras,” Brandon warned, pointing a joking finger at the blond activist as he reached for his keys.

“Be careful,” David added, his words taking on different layers of meaning to Blake. David could see in Blake’s eyes, in his smile, how no amount of warnings was going to stop him from being with Chris. The heart wants what it wants, David knew this as much as anyone, and Blake was going to go through with this no matter how bad of an idea falling for a closeted man could be. David thought it was inevitable Blake was going to fall, and fall hard – his friend didn’t have a chance to make this work and not get his heart broken. And when that happened, David would be there, reluctant yet sympathetic, to pick up the pieces.

Another vibration; another text from the charming officer. This one, far more clipped than the last, was in response to Blake’s last message, and caused a candid grin to spread across his face and a newfound desire to get the hell out of Brandon’s apartment.

“ **At your door. Open up! :-)** ”

The excitement in Blake’s body, building like a coiled spring, pushed him closer to the door with no protests from the other men in the bedroom. With a laugh and a quick wave to the three, Blake left to meet the officer, and to attempt to grasp a little bit of happiness for himself in his second evening with Chris.

“Don’t forget to fuck him this time!” Danny called after him, and getting promptly pummeled by bed pillows for the comment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The [Madras Cafe](http://madrascafenyc.com/) is a cute little restaurant in the East Village that, to me, embodies a lot of what's so great about New York: it's a kosher, vegetarian, Indian-fusion cuisine restaurant. XD I haven't tried the food there yet but I'm working up to it. It also makes me wonder if Blake really DOES like Indian food IRL.
> 
> [The Townhouse](http://www.townhouseny.com/) advertises itself as a true gentlemen's club, catering to wealthy, professional gay men. It has a bar and American Continental restaurant on the first floor, and a more exclusive setting downstairs. (Think the 21 club, but gay ~~er~~.) It's one of those places where you have to be wearing khakis, a blazer and a fat checkbook just to get in the door, and it's quite different from the trendy yet sweet Madras Cafe.
> 
> A random note, but Ace and Brandon are meeting the senior partners of his lawfirm - Davis, Fuller & Lythgoe, heehee - at [The Mesa Grill](http://www.mesagrill.com/newyorkcity/), which happens to be one of Food Network star Bobby Flay's restaurants in the city.


	8. Through the world I'll beg my bread, I'll find my love alive or dead

Blake nearly lost his footing on a curb and face planted into the asphalt at the sight of Chris Richardson leaning against the slate pilasters of his building’s entrance. The younger man stood, reclining, hands holding his light jacket closed at the pockets, his gaze drifting up and down the avenue for a familiar blond, smiling face. His eyes were clear green beacons against the dull gray of the building’s façade, like Irish peat against a granite crag; the rectangular patch of grass and tree set in the eye of a concrete metropolis.

In that brief moment when Blake first noticed Chris standing at his doorway and before the officer finally recognized him approaching, Blake felt like he could look upon him forever, always optimistic about that night, always waiting. He tried to push his nagging thoughts out of his mind, the thoughts that had festered and taken up residence ever since David remarked on Chris’s reluctance to publicize his sexuality. But Blake only succeeded in pressing them into the background, erasing the cloud of doubt in his eyes as he gave a genuine smile to the man before him.

“Took you long enough,” the younger man joked, though his eyes shone a different sentiment of excitement and relief over Blake’s visage, and he pushed himself off the wall to properly greet him. Taking quick yet observant glances to the north and south of the street and finding no one paying close attention to the pair – two men unpacked a shipping van into a warehouse at the far end of the block, while a family of camera-toting tourists walked away from them obliviously. Chris bent his head down to capture Blake’s lips into a chaste, soft kiss, smiling to himself when he felt the older man’s startled gasp against his skin like the calmest spring breeze.

“Sorry, friend was having a fashion meltdown…you know how it is.” From the genial yet empty look on Chris’s face Blake could tell that no, he really didn’t know how it was, the closest instance to it probably being dragged into a dreaded shopping trip with his sister. Blake wondered if Chris even had gay friends, if he ever did, and how the hell did the officer think he’d get through life without a supportive network of friends that knew who he really was? Blake shook the thoughts out of his head, disguised it as a simple cough, and hoped Chris hadn’t noticed the flash in his eyes. “So, dinner? I know this great Indian place…” he deftly changed the subject.

It was only then that Blake noticed the familiar plastic shopping bags at Chris’s feet, three in all and filled with bulky items the bags’ opaqueness cleverly hid. He quirked an eyebrow at the foot-length loaf of crusted bread peeking out of the first bag. It was quite out of the ordinary for someone to bring their groceries with them on a second date.

Chris noticed Blake’s gaze fall downward, to the bags on the ground, neon blue Gristede’s logos emblazoned across the front; saw the confusion in Blake’s eyes and smiled. He wondered when was the last time Blake had a home-cooked meal…or, for that matter, had gone out to the grocery store for more than milk and condoms. “Although that sounds great, I love Indian food –“ Blake silently congratulated himself for the correct assumption, “- I kinda had a different idea for tonight.”

***

Spatula. Spatula. Where the fuck was his spatula?

Blake fumbled through cupboard and drawer in the small kitchen, on a dire mission to find the prized utensil he was sure his mother had insisted he needed on her visit to New York last Christmas. A bevy of spices and ingredients littered his countertops like nothing his kitchen had ever seen before, a copper pan sizzling with mouth-watering breasts of chicken inside. It was for this reason Blake found himself on his current quest, finally opening the stainless steel dishwasher and finding the precious spatula, wondering when he could have possibly needed to use it enough to feel the need to wash it.

Raising the found spatula triumphantly in the air, Blake struck a grandiose pose much to Chris’s amusement, the younger man grinning and stifling a belly laugh, eyes crinkling deliciously into that smile Blake loved to coax out of his seemingly impassive appearance. “I am victorious!” Blake pronounced, presenting the spatula to Chris with one hand, the other resting proudly against a cocked hip.

“You are ridiculous,” Chris corrected him between laughs, taking the utensil from Blake’s outstretched tattooed arm to tend to the chicken in the pan. The apartment was alive and sizzling with more than just flavor and scent, a lifetime of comfort and familiarity passing between the two men as easily as water through a colander.

“I haven’t heard any complaints yet.” Blake sidled stealthily up next to Chris’s body, eyes half-lidded in both playfulness and lust. He wrapped an arm around Chris’s waist, taking in the solid feel of muscle and bone underneath the younger man’s dress shirt, a devilish, rogue-like smile on his lips, which charmed Chris instantly. Blake tilted his head upwards towards the taller man with the tiniest quirk of one eyebrow, waiting; he wasn’t left disappointed as Chris’s lips pressed against his, the sweet taste of mint toothpaste and stolen samples of tomato sauce lingering on his tongue. Blake’s grip on the other man’s waist pulled tighter, reeling the man closer in, but Chris was already flipping off the heat of the pan with his forearm and coyly, reluctantly pulling away. They would be able to kiss any time – actually Chris was planning on it – but if left untended their whole dinner could burn.

Although slightly downtrodden over the officer breaking their kiss – and right at the time when Blake was to propose that all sauces should be tomato-mint kiss-flavored – he looked at the chicken with an expectant eye. “Now the cheese, I’m guessing?” he asked, his arm completely refusing to release its hold on Chris’s waist.

“God, you really are clueless in the kitchen,” replied Chris with a grin. He had made sure to bring with him all of the ingredients for a spectacular yet simple dinner. The thought of cooking for Blake seeded into his mind ever since hearing about the activist’s regular eating habits. “Yeah, usually mozzarella and a decent helping of tomato sauce are necessary for a passable Chicken Parmesan.”

He liked the unforced closeness with the other man, they both did; enjoying the simple, joyous feeling of warm bodies next to one another, even only with the casual contact of jointly making dinner. “My mom focused on letting my natural interests and talents develop and flow,” Blake laughed, his voice taking on an ethereal mocking one. He remembered the six-month hobby clubs as a child, the new-age unstructured music lessons, the creative writing and journalism workshops, each his parents’ response to the artistic whims of their child. “She completely glossed over that useless skill of feeding myself. Thank God for take-out.” _And thank God for sweet, attractive police officers coming into my home and cook for me_ , Blake tacked on to the end of his thoughts though it was not verbally expressed.

“My momma did right by me, I guess.” A red-stained wooden spoon was thrust into Blake’s line of vision, _his_ wooden spoon, though he doubted he used it for more than fishing slices of bread out of the slots of the toaster. “Taste?” Chris offered the tablespoon of tomato sauce to Blake, and after a quick blow to cool he pressed the wood to his lips, the acidic yet sweet taste of the sauce already hitting his senses. Blake darted out his tongue to sweep across the plane of grainy wood, taking in the spoonful of sauce and letting the homey aromas and spices take over. He was beginning to enjoy this evening far more than any night out he’d had in recent memory.

The orange-red of the tomato sauce stained his lips into a bee-stung like pout; he ran a tongue over his own lips self-indulgently, seeing and feeling the shiver course through Chris’s frame. “Needs oregano,” he suggested jokingly, as he felt Chris’s lips descend upon his in a giddy trance. His breath caught in his throat as Chris’s tongue snaked into his open mouth with a moan, mingling with Blake’s and taking an interesting taste of the sauce himself. At the rate they were going, Blake thought, the arm around Chris’s waist cleverly inching down and underneath the officer’s shirt to play against the toned skin, they were never going to actually get to eating dinner.

Pulling away from the kiss with a level of reluctance and a promise of more for dessert, Chris smacked his lips satisfyingly. “I think it tastes perfect,” he whispered, eyes closing suddenly and a set of teeth biting down on that red-tinged lip when Blake ran a palm down to Chris’s ass and squeezed.

He thought fleetingly of letting the sauce burn, the chicken cool to an inedible state while he took Blake right there in the kitchen, or the bed, atop that ridiculous purple couch that seemed absolutely perfect, harmonious even, when placed in the context of Blake Lewis’s apartment. But no, he wasn’t willing to let a thought-out plan that was already set into motion unravel and spoil just for instant gratification. Chris hissed between his teeth at the erection in his jeans, suppressing his desires easily, so well-practiced in the act it was a near automatic reaction in daily life. Besides, he would have felt mortified if they had let the pasta boil over onto the rarely-used stovetop…oh, the pasta…

Disentangling himself from Blake’s inviting embrace to fish out the cheese from the fridge – Blake whined in protest, but as soon as he discovered the reasoning behind Chris’s departure he became oddly excited – the younger man pointed to the pot of hot water and rotini quietly bubbling away on a back burner. “Check the pasta, will you, babe?” he requested, his head in the fridge, secretly smiling over the ease of which he called the other man by that term.

Blake made a noise in the back of his throat similar to a crashing cymbal, waved dismissively at the boiling pot despite no one but himself and the stovetop being able to see the gesture. “The pasta’s fine,” he said breezily, not bothering to look.

“Pasta needs to be cooked the right way,” Blake could feel the frown in Chris’s voice before he saw it, the officer emerging from the fridge with a block of mozzarella in hand, tiny distressed creases folding into his features unnaturally. “ _Al dente:_ cooked, but with a bite to it. It’s how pasta’s supposed to be served.” Chris had taken all this in as a young boy, rules on cooking and cuisine as ingrained as “I before E” and “don’t take candy from strangers.”

The activist, however, was never given the same culinary instruction and didn’t live by the same set of stringent codes in the kitchen; pasta was a food of convenience, meant to stew and boil until he was ready for it. “The pasta doesn’t have to live by society’s predetermined conventions for its preparation,” he laughed, but his smile faded as he saw all over Chris’s face that he was not also enjoying the joke.

“This is the way pasta’s supposed to be,” Chris was stalwart, stubborn, his eyes on Blake as he put the block of cheese down onto the counter, not an iota of amusement in his eyes. “It’s the way everyone expects pasta to taste.” Then it flashed again in his eyes, Blake could see it clear as anything: that fascination and fear, the invisible wall Chris had behind remarkably green eyes. The insecurities Chris walked around with that kept him and Blake at opposite ends of their sexuality, despite in some aspect being on the self-same page. His voice was small, scared of the gravity of his own thoughts. “Pasta really doesn’t have a say in how you eat it.”

The tension Blake was feeling in the air was no longer sexual; Chris was quickly closing himself off, stumbling into a realm of self-awareness that is not meant to occur over Chicken Parmesan on a second date. Blake didn’t want this; he didn’t want Chris to feel affronted, forced to close himself off when it was only the two of them in the room. It was painfully clear to Blake this conversation was no longer about the rotini. 

He licked his lips as he thought carefully about his next words, noting the sudden stress in Chris’s shoulders. “I like my pasta overcooked, and mushy,” he said, his eyes wide and sincere. He shrugged. “I guess it’s not how you’re supposed to have it…maybe I like to be different. But it’s what I like, and I’m not going to change that because of how it’s supposed to be.”

“It’s not that simple,” Chris began to protest, the tension he was feeling over the conversation spreading through his body, tightening the tendons in his arms and legs, causing the vein at his throat to throb. Blake saw all this, saw how a simple talk about rotini was transforming Chris’s easy, sexy confidence into something closed, away from Blake; caged. Blake took a step closer to Chris tentatively, but instead of reaching his hand out to the other man he reached beside him to the lever for the stove’s burners.

“We’ll have it your way tonight,” Blake conceded, turning the flame off of the pot with his gaze transfixed on Chris. He could see how much Chris needed this, how he wasn’t ready for an argument about cooking pasta and all the implications behind it. “But all I’m saying is…you don’t have to live by what everyone else thinks is right.”

Chris felt himself exhale all the pressure he had been feeling, all of the weight that had built up in him in the past few minutes, as Blake took his hand in his. “Now,” the activist said, his voice feeling like comfort, like home to Chris. “Are there any culinary philosophies about cheese that I should know about?”

***

The rest of the preparation went by without consequence: Chris sliced the doughy mozzarella as Blake snatched pieces off the cutting board while the officer wasn’t looking. Blake strained the pasta and looked on as Chris seasoned and simmered the store-bought sauce to perfection. In the small bit of downtime they had while the chicken finished its transformation into dinner, Blake had gone over to the corner of the apartment searching through the scores of eclectic albums stacked along a bookshelf nearly to the high ceilings of the room and snapped on a turntable that brought out sheer envy in Chris. Blake’s collection was far more varied than what was sold at the Cake Shop, a healthy dose of Miles Davis next to DJ versions of Duran Duran, old Cream singles housed next to Scriabin. The multi-faceted collection reminded Chris of its owner: many-sided but with each detail adding exquisitely to the whole, one single emotion or sentiment impossible to make out.

They settled on a jazz instrumental, something mellow with layered beats that Chris didn’t recognize but Blake seemed to know by every measure, softly calling out a particular riff every now and then or closing his eyes in soft reverie. The dinner was something to photograph and display for the culinary elite, or so Blake thought. Mouth-watering chicken laid atop a wave of rotini – cooked _al dente_ , of course, but Blake would have to talk about that with Chris the next time they had pasta – with a healthy topping of melted mozzarella and tomato sauce. Blake had certainly had Chicken Parmesan before, but never made in his own kitchen, crafted by a man whose very dishes seemed to be made with such care.

Chris couldn’t help but laugh at the look of pure pleasure that crossed Blake’s face from the mixed stimuli of a percussion solo and a bite of chicken breast; it was amusingly similar to the look last night, when he was between Chris’s legs, slick and stroking them both to release. “It’s not that good,” he said, blush creeping onto his cheeks as Blake balked in response.

“This,” the activist replied with a mouth full of chicken and praise, “…is fucking amazing.” He quickly swallowed the last morsel to join Chris’s laughter. “You’re gonna have to give me the recipe.”

A hand reached across the table, tanned fingers brushing against his own until Blake’s hand opened, accepting the gentle touch upon his palm. “Or I could just make it for you again,” said Chris with a warm smile, hoping that the next time he was with Blake he’d be invited in as more than just a cook.

The smile on Blake’s face brightened, reaching up to his eyes, sparks of electricity and something else Chris couldn’t identify. “I’d like that,” he whispered; his gaze turned downwards, to their entwined hands, forcing his body not to visibly shudder from the feel of Chris’s thick, calloused thumb tracing along the roots of his tattoo.

Blake told Chris the story behind each one of his tattoos, the conversation flowing effortlessly between them like aroma from an Italian hearth, both man wanted to know everything their minds could soak in about the other. He described how he had gotten the roots on his last visit to Seattle when his childhood friends expressed the rare, genuine concern that ‘Blake In The Big City’ would forget all about them. He even explained the fire and water residing between his shoulder blades, a tattoo Chris had not gotten a detailed look at considering the night before Blake was on his back, Chris deliciously overtop him. Blake’s face soured as he reached up and behind him, tapping the unseen tattoo with his fork, and explained how he wanted to get it removed once he had the money, it being an old, drunken reminder of an ex-girlfriend.

“Ex-girlfriend?” questioned Chris.

“Told you it was ancient,” Blake replied with a wink. “Now you see why I want to get rid of it.”

Chris had a tattoo as well; the news surprised Blake, who assumed the officer’s Southern white-bread upbringing extended even to a blemish-less body. He raised his arm while lifting up the sleeve, revealing three sharp-looking arrows decorated in red and blue on the underside of his bicep. An old military tattoo, Chris explained, talking briefly about his father’s time in the Air Force and his grandfather’s faded memories of Normandy. Blake’s eyes darkened at the sight, fingertips itching to graze against the inked flesh and watch Chris shiver, tongue dying to trace those arrows and see where they led. He hadn’t noticed the tattoo the previous night but then again, he had quite a few other things on his mind besides inspecting the officer’s body for ink.

But the tale behind the commemorative tattoo brought up another question in Blake’s mind, something Chris had touched upon in the Cake Shop last night but had never elaborated upon. “The story behind this,” Blake couldn’t stop himself from reaching over the plates of half-eaten Chicken Parmesan and pressing a finger to the tattoo, the flesh yielding briefly before he reached hard muscle. “Your dad, your grandfather…is that why you wanted to become a cop?”

He hasn’t meant to approach the subject that abruptly, not when Chris was halfway to a long sip of wine – the one ingredient to the dinner Blake had contributed, an ’87 Chardonnay he was fond of, for a white. The pair had managed not to mention anything about Chris’s profession the entire night: Blake knew the police force was less than welcoming towards gay men in their ranks, and figured it was one of the reasons Chris wasn’t terribly public about his sexuality. The younger man was reluctant to talk about the comings and goings of his workday and wasn’t making an effort to mention it; the topic wasn’t outright forbidden but there seemed to be a perceived tension about Chris’s career. Blake pushed that nervousness aside, the desire to know Chris running deeper than the fear.

But the topic seemed to be one Chris felt at ease with, going slowly but captivatingly into the story behind a small town boy finding himself with a badge and a bus ticket to New York. “Yeah, they were part of it,” he agreed, fingers absently tracing over the inked arrows against his skin, remembering the wetness in his father’s eyes when he first showed him the design. “Family’s an important thing to me…broke my mother’s heart when I told her I was moving up here.”

“Then why’d you come here? I’m sure Mayberry P.D.’s always recruiting.”

Chris laughed, shaking a finger at the amused activist. “I do not come from Mayberry, Mr. ‘Anywhere With Less Than A Million People Is Bumblefuck’.” He settled again into narrative, unusually calm about revealing so much of himself to Blake, pulling back crucial petals of a flower, dangerously close to its center. “I always knew I wanted to help people, to really make a difference in the world. Was thinking about enlisting, but then 9/11 happened…figured I could do more good locally, y’know? So I got my criminal justice degree, looked for openings…New York seemed like a really logical choice for me.”

Now, Blake was silently thankful for that chance amount of logic; that simple choice of Chris’s to make a new start in the city known for new starts and clean slates. “My parents didn’t understand it much, why I wanted to leave.” Chris swished the wine around in his glass, watching the waves undulate in soft amber; he had tried to compare it to his father traveling the globe after enlisting, boasted to his friends that there simply wasn’t enough crime in Chesapeake to satisfy him. “But I wanted…I _needed_ to get away; I knew I could find my purpose here.”

Blake could see the meaning behind the carefully chosen words, noticed the concepts missing and the way Chris was no longer meeting his eye. A driving desire to serve the public was only half of the story; the crater down on Chambers Street wasn’t the only reason Chris had longed to escape his small hometown to New York. He might have been in the closet here but he would have been so far underground in Virginia he’d have inhaled the soil instead of the bittersweet Manhattan air. And with the way he kissed Blake last night, the way he slid into Blake’s palm and moaned recklessly into his ear, the activist could guess that he wasn’t the first man in New York Chris had been with. There was good reason the officer had come to the city to meet his fate, to break away from the milk and cherry pie life that would never be his future.

Blake cleared his throat, noticing the sudden shift in Chris’s demeanor: he slouched in his seat, a deflated balloon, letting out more than he had originally expected. “If you can make it here,” he lobbed the line over the dinner table to Chris, holding up his wine glass for a toast. His entire face brightened as he watched the walls come down Chris’s gaze meeting his, fingers curling around the stem of his glass and lifting it to Blake’s with a satisfying clink. The pleasant, full sound seemed to rise above the softly playing LP in the background, a stinging harmony that brought a smile to Chris’s lips.

“It’s one of the reasons I came here, too,” Blake divulged, watching Chris’s eyes widen with interest; the officer had shared a part of himself with Blake, a part vulnerable and raw, and it was only fair that he do the same. “I needed to find myself…see if I really could put all that damned potential everyone kept telling me about to good use.”

His response won him a confused smirk from the officer, eyebrows furrowing in the orange glow of the streetlights streaming in from the window. He knew the question on Chris’s tongue before he ever asked it. “What, you think I came across an entire continent just to bartend in some pseudo-hipster indie place?” The laugh he received from that made up for Chris’s closed behavior beforehand: a full laugh deep from the younger man’s gut, eyes crinkled shut and dimples at full blast, head tipping back to reveal that delicious bobbing Adam’s Apple. That was the Chris Richardson Blake longed to have dinner with, to reach over his kitchen table and brush fingertips against his palm. Blake wanted to connect with the real Chris, the one behind the walls and the badge.

“I was real noisy as a kid – still making noise, I guess – I think it’s an only child thing.” Blake’s thoughts flashed over the probably logical assumption that Chris was the kid on the opposite spectrum of that all-powerful high school hierarchy: tall, imposing, quiet but with authority. Chris’s thoughts lingered on just how much noise he could get out of Blake tonight. “Around high school I started finding a purpose for my noise; I realized all I really wanted to do was be heard. Had a friend on the newspaper in junior year and decided to try that out. Apparently I was pretty good at it; I’ve been writing ever since.”

Chris quirked an eyebrow, now fully perplexed by the man before him. He had been listening with uninterrupted attention to Blake, eager to learn more about the activist’s past and what made him the strong-willed person he was. But he certainly wasn’t expecting this: for the past two days Blake hadn’t spoken a word about his passion, and yet here it was, Blake serving the information up to Chris like a home cooked meal. He wondered if that was what Blake had been working on when Chris had woken up in bed alone that morning. “What do you write?” He asked animatedly. “Novels and things?”

Blake’s eyes turned cloudy and distant; he hesitated for the briefest of moments, but Chris still noticed it, a rarely-used filter on Blake’s constant stream of ideas and noise. “No, none of that,” he laughed off. Novels took too long for Blake’s attention span, and poetry took too much concentration, too much revision and emphasis on style and meter. Blake saw writing as something far more organic than that, a way to get his thoughts and ideals into tangible, touchable words, and from those words to people’s hearts. “I’m a journalist. At least, it pays for the apartment.”

“Really?” The questions came at rapid fire now, the officer’s interests piqued. He wanted to see inside of this part of Blake, of this talent and passion he said he had. “Do you write for a newspaper? A magazine? Are you published all the time, or is it freelance work? Can I see some of your work? I bet it’ll be –“

He stopped abruptly as he felt the warm, slow touch creeping up his leg, underneath the cuff of his pants, starting at his ankle but inching up the calf as far as the denim would allow. The breath caught in Chris’s throat, the rest of his words left unsaid as he closed his eyes to the touch, Blake’s socked foot pressing on a particularly sensitive spot that caused the officer’s cock to twitch.

“I’m absolutely stuffed.” Blake’s voice was at that low register again that reverberated through Chris’s body, making him shudder out of pleasure. “I don’t think I can eat another bite.” His eyes were on Chris’s, fiery and determined, one eyebrow raised slightly and the tiniest hint of a smirk on his lips. “So maybe we should clear these dishes and move right on to dessert.”

Chris recognized the hungry look in Blake’s eyes, the thinly veiled proposition, the way Blake’s foot curved around the taut muscles of Chris’s calf, feeling up to ripping his jeans apart if he could. The officer understood where this game was going. “But I didn’t bring any dessert with me,” the younger man smiled, leaning over in his chair and repositioning his leg at a different angle for better access. The fabric of his boxers brushed tauntingly against his cock, and Chris had to grip the edge of the table to prevent himself from knocking it over and taking Blake right on the floor.

The mischievous look in Blake’s eyes was monumental, like a child receiving an adrenaline rush after stealing his first piece of penny candy; a mechanic about to test his new wheels on the road for the first time. “Well, I wasn’t planning on baking a goddamned cake.”


	9. And I'll write some words upon the wall so everyone will know, I love so much that I could see his blood upon the rose

Blake was halfway through soaking the dishes – he might have been a veritable disaster while cooking in the kitchen, but his mother sure taught him how to wash a dish – when he realized he had no recognition of where Chris was in the small apartment, couldn’t feel his presence, and it unhinged him. With tattooed arms halfway sunk into a sink full of soapy water, Blake turned and pivoted his body as best he could trying to catch a buzzed head or a flash of startling green in his line of vision. “So, I was thinking,” he said a little louder than necessary in case the younger man was in the bathroom. “There’s a new place David has been raving about on 8th Avenue, I thought maybe we could swing by there…”

He didn’t particularly want to leave the comfort and convenience of his apartment, what with his bed only a dozen feet away and the man he wanted in that bed around the same distance away. But he also had the dark, self-satisfying desire to show Chris off, to take him to the most exclusive clubs in town with an arm possessively around his waist. He wanted to prove to David that the relationship he was yearning for was real, was going to break past the fears and misgivings. More than that, he wanted _Chris_ to be comfortable with it, to be out with Blake – in every sense of the word – and know that it didn’t matter who saw them or knew about his sexuality, as long as they were together. He hoped for Chris to be as natural and unguarded with Blake in the middle of the most notorious gay club in New York as he was in Blake’s living room.

From seemingly out of nowhere a pair of strong arms wrapped themselves around his waist from behind, large palms grazing against him through pesky layers of clothing, Chris’s presence suddenly all around him. He felt the subtle press of Chris’s full, muscular frame at his back as a hand slid upwards to the activist’s chest; Blake dreamed he could detail the definition of Chris’s chest just from the close contact, outline every muscle. Breath was hot and wet against the back of Blake’s neck, the shell of his ear…Blake shivered as the tip of Chris’s tongue flicked out to caress it, and any and all dishes in that sink were forgotten.

“Or,” Chris’s voice was like nothing Blake had ever heard before, the low, seductive tone coaxing out the humble Virginian drawl in his voice. He was accenting each word with a kiss against Blake’s earlobe, the slow curve of his neck; Blake’s eyes drifted closed in spite of himself, his toes curling inside of his socks. “We could…” A hand ghosted over Blake’s nipple; he gasped, hearing the low chuckle in Chris’s voice at his reaction. “Just stay in…”

The arms around his frame pulled Blake tighter to the officer’s body as Chris raked teeth over the sensitive pulse point below Blake’s jaw. The sensation of Chris’s body against his, erection pressing into the small of his back through layers of clothing, was distracting enough to make him forget about all of those doubts simmering like thick sauce in his mind. When Chris was up against him like this, taking control like Blake had not seen him before, he stopped thinking about reasons behind Chris’s reluctance to being out. Blake tilted his head back as Chris softly sucked on his neck, the dark blond hair on the back of his head brushing against the other man’s cheek. With the way Chris felt against him like this, Blake could easily forget his own name.

“Sounds…like a plan…” Blake sighed, allowing Chris to take control and press his body up against the kitchen counter, enjoying the heat of their bodies together far too much to complain. He pulled his hands out of the soapy water, leaving the sink full of dishes to be cleaned at some other time; Blake didn’t even want to take the time to load the dishwasher, didn’t want to move lest Chris’s lips detach from his skin.

Chris dragged a hand roughly down Blake’s abdomen, pressing against the cotton of too many layers until his fingers hit the hem of his pants, the fabric straining against a quickly filling erection, the heat and thickness almost itching for Chris’s touch. He obliged, skimming a hand over the bulge and holding Blake’s body against his own with the other arm, sandwiching him between the kitchen counter and hard, defined muscle. Chris smiled against Blake’s skin as he felt the smaller man’s body tense, shiver, watched as Blake’s hands gripped the edge of the sink, knuckles bare white.

“God, I want you,” Chris’s voice growled, sounding alien even to his own ears, a deep, animal desire for Blake that he felt in every crevice of his body. His hand traveled lower still, brushing against Blake’s tender thigh like the hand so commonly touched his own, a nervous habit more than one person had pointed out to him. He dreamed he could feel Blake’s pulse quicken underneath his fingers, or was it the spot where his lips made contact with flesh, or could it be his own heartbeat he was feeling?

He was flush against Blake’s back now, hips working under their own power and making short, shallow thrusts into the cleft of the activist’s ass through their clothing, staccato accents to the kisses and bites he placed along Blake’s jawline. Blake was rolling his head back for full access, alternating between pressing back into Chris’s body, up against the cock strained behind denim, and thrusting forward to the hand that gripped his thigh. Chris’s teeth bit a particularly sensitive spot and Blake lurched forward, mouth open in a sudden, shameless moan; his arm pulled back to grip Chris’s bicep, instinctively reaching for the skin stained with his tattoo, his hands wet from the dishwater but Chris didn’t seem to mind.

They were grinding deep and fast, the record on Blake’s turntable long run over to leave the apartment silent but for the pair’s heavy, labored breathing. Blake’s right arm gripped flesh wherever he could find it on Chris’s body, his left arm still holding onto the sink’s edge as if he were on the precipice of a cliff’s face. They were both wearing far too much clothing for Blake’s taste, too many layers between them and he wasn’t interested in a rushed fit of passion as they had the night before. He simply couldn’t get enough of Chris’s touch, his taste, and he wanted this to last as long as possible.

Almost instinctively Chris responded, pulling away suddenly from their heated embrace and leaving Blake gasping from the loss. But the emptiness was only momentary: Blake felt rough yet caressing hands against his waist spinning him around to face the officer, and then Chris’s lips were on his, tongue probing deep and sudden, taking Blake’s breath away.

Arms quickly wrapped around bodies, gripping shoulderblades, pawing underneath shirts to reach scorching skin. Blake was blown away by Chris taking such control, tipping Blake back against the counter as he raised the fabric of his shirts up over his chest, hands spread against the tattoo on his upper back. He didn’t even know the officer had it in him, especially with the slow and cautious way he had first kissed Blake the night before.

Chris’s shirt came off first, with Blake pulling at the material until he thought it would almost tear, all too eager to see the flesh and muscle underneath. The officer silently cursed into Blake’s mouth as he met layer after layer under his fingertips, wondering just how many pounds of Bake was pure clothing. One, two, three shirts and a sweater vest later and Blake was naked from the waist up, revealing those tattoos Chris couldn’t get out of his head all day. Much to Blake’s surprise and irritation, Chris let the shirts drop into the soapy water with a splash.

“Hey!” Blake tried to protest, but Chris silenced him with a demanding kiss.

“Serves you right,” he mumbled, nose nuzzling against the sculpted stubble across Blake’s cheek. “Too much clothing…”

Chris rocked his hips against Blake’s, reveling in watching Blake’s reaction to the motion, the activist rolling his head back and biting back a moan. He was using his body mass and physical strength to take the advantage, pressing Blake against the kitchen counter, large palms sliding over skin. He loved letting himself go like this, allowing himself to dominate and take control, to be with a man like Blake and enjoy it. “ _Want_ you,” he growled again into Blake’s ear, teeth raking against the lobe; from the thrilling bulge in Blake’s pants and the way he pushed against Chris, the officer could tell the feeling was mutual.

A sly hand snaked in between their bodies, a devious smile on Blake’s lips. “Want this,” he replied in a deep, guttural voice, his hand running heel to nail slowly up Chris’s crotch, a rough, lingering touch along the now prominent outline of Chris’s erection. His hand stopped at the waist of Chris’s jeans, unbuttoning the fly with one experienced hand. Blake licked his lips, panting breaths passing between them, as he took hold of Chris’s cock and now it was the officer’s turn to roll his head back and gasp.

Blake was fascinated by the expressions crossing over Chris’s face, shy blush of arousal transitioning into a tangible, desperate need in a creased brow. Blake’s fingers dragged over the erection once more, feeling the pulse of blood rush to the head, and he pulled down Chris’s jeans and underwear, slipping his hand into the elastic and dragging it down. Chris let out a stuttered cry and bucked forward as Blake took him in his hand, stroking hard and lazily like the night before. “Want you fucking me. Chris –“

The officer was more than happy to oblige. Hungrily recapturing Blake’s lips with his own Chris worked himself out of his pants fully and started on Blake’s as well. Once Blake stepped out of his pants – Chris hadn’t noticed Blake’s lack of underwear the night before but it was obvious now, Blake’s cock springing to attention after peeling back only one layer of fabric – Chris pressed their bodies together once more, fully naked and lustfully against one another.

Blake’s mind was reeling from the sensations Chris was giving him, hands running up and down his sides and already memorizing the tattoos along his flesh, dicks brushing against one another with a heat he could never begin to describe. He distantly heard Chris’s voice in his ear, something about a condom, but the fog of arousal was washing over Blake and his mind was all about skin and white noise, logical thought checking out for the night and staying at a hotel as Blake reached around to Chris’s ass and squeezed. “Breadbox,” he managed out a choked breath, unable to comprehend how he would ever last any respectable amount of time at this point in the night.

“Wait, what?” The answer caught Chris off guard to say the least, one hand passed halfway through Blake’s hair, the other gripping Blake’s hipbone hard enough to bruise.

Reaching over the countertop behind him with a genuine grin, Blake flipped open the walnut breadbox, a modest collection of small plastic packages in a pile inside. Blake never had found a use for his extra storage space, but like the boy scout he had been for three whole weeks sometime in third grade, he was always prepared. Chris wasn’t expecting that response, and certainly wasn’t expecting Blake to make good on condoms in the breadbox, but considering the extremely fortunate turn of events he decided not to dwell on the topic. He laughed, shook his head as Blake shrugged sheepishly, mumbling something about never having bread in the house anyway; kissed him softly on the mouth when he joked about only having magnums.

“I don’t think I’m ever gonna fully understand you,” Chris rested his forehead against Blake’s, beads of sweat already forming from the pressure at his crotch, as Blake pulled back his hand with a condom in tow. “Ribbed For Her Pleasure” – Chris couldn’t help but chuckle at the irony.

“Oh, baby,” groaned Blake, taking a quick nip at Chris’s lower lip while it was within range. “I’m just full of surprises.”

A startling little grunt, a quick shift of limbs, and Blake found himself pinned against the opposite wall, chest pressed to electric blue plaster, only feet away from his beloved purple couch, laptop open and whirring away on the cushions. Chris’s mouth and teeth were on him in no time, slick body sliding against the inked skin of Blake’s back, legs hastily positioning themselves on the outside of Blake’s obligingly wide stance. Chris’s touch was tender but passionate, never afraid that Blake would crack or break, taking the activist’s mewls of encouragement as an indication that he could go farther, press deeper.

Chris’s fingers brushed along the older man’s jawline until the tips reached the corner of his lips, asking without words. Turning his head to the side Blake took two fingers into his mouth, wrapping his tongue around the digits, closing his eyes indulgently at the thick, heady taste of Chris’s skin on his tongue. Chris shuddered, pressed his body close against Blake’s so that his hard cock slid along the cleft of his ass, teasing Blake as much as Blake’s tongue was teasing Chris. The older man could hear the tear of foil behind him, felt Chris’s breath hot on the back of his neck, and God, he could feel the desire burning underneath his skin for that feeling, that release…

Fingers were replaced by tongue in Blake’s mouth, Chris kissing hard and sudden to almost bruise. Blake felt the dull burn of one finger inside him, then two, working in to the knuckle, curving, nearly bringing Blake down to his knees. He pressed back with a groan, wanting more, his fingers gripping into the smooth face of the wall. Chris was mumbling things into his ear, about how hot and tight Blake’s body was, how he couldn’t wait to get inside. How Blake must look so beautiful when he’s screaming out an orgasm from the inside out.

“Then make me,” challenged Blake, rocking against Chris’s fingers, pressing a sweat-damp forehead against plaster to gain more leverage. Blake was babbling now, strings of words both affectionate and downright dirty just to hear that stuttering gasp from Chris’s mouth, to hear the officer beg for Blake to keep talking like that in a belabored voice. “Make me come…oh, God, just fuck me already…”

The officer retreated and Blake shivered from the loss, but then came something thicker and hotter prodding at his hole, Chris sheathed in latex, begging for entrance. He worked slowly at first, receptive to Blake’s moans and the resistance of the smaller man’s body like a lion tamer calming a wild beast. With one hand on Blake’s hip and the other resting against the wall, holding him steady should either of their legs give out from the pleasure, he eased into Blake, the tight walls around his cock almost sending him over the edge. He placed a heated kiss against the tattoo on Blake’s back, flicked his tongue out to taste the water and the flames: faint scent of Softsoap, salty sweat, and beneath that the taste of Blake.

“Come on,” Blake started the rhythm first, pulling back his hand to rest over Chris’s atop his hip, urging the younger man to move. “Want to feel you…”

Chris was only momentarily distracted by the overwhelming sensation of being inside Blake: taking charge once more he swatted Blake’s hand away and thrust deep, a sudden movement that had Blake’s head tipping back with a gasp. “God,” he rasped into Blake’s ear, raking teeth against the skin. “Love how you feel, B…” He worked up a slow yet torturing rhythm, thrusting up and in but never letting himself pull out fully, enjoying far too much the way Blake felt around him and how it made the activist groan and plead for more.

He was breathing heavy in Blake’s ear, their bodies slick with sweat and exertion, and he could feel the erratic way the younger man’s rhythm had deteriorated, the soft whine in his gasps and the sound of a sinful slap of skin against skin. Chris was close, Blake could feel it in the desperate, vice-like grip he had on the older man’s hip, slowly moving his palm across Blake’s stomach to pull the other man closer. With a strangled cry he came, he body shuddering from the energy and the sensation, Blake’s whispered name on his lips.

But before Chris could find comfort in the sated hum underneath his skin, before Blake could snake a hand down to his aching cock that had been woefully neglected through the whole encounter, the activist felt himself under the power of a pair of strong arms, spinning him around against the wall to face Chris. With one smoldering look from eyes of unique green, Chris was on his knees, running his hands down Blake’s chest in one fluid motion. He took Blake deep into his mouth, sucking without mercy and steadying Blake’s rocking hips with a firm hand. This was all too much for Blake; his eyes clenched shut as stars billowed through his line of vision, Chris too fast for him to react and pull his hands to that buzzed head. He came with a wail into Chris’s mouth, loud enough to possibly get the cops called on him but he didn’t give a damn, the only cop he cared about was on his knees in front of him, licking him clean through his aftershocks.

There were a few crucial seconds in the apartment where the only sounds were Blake and Chris’s labored breathing as the two men came down, synchronized, from their natural high of orgasm. Chris pulled the condom off with a deep, sated sigh, but didn’t feel like moving from his position against Blake’s crotch, head resting lazily against a hipbone, hand absently petting an affectionate trail along Blake’s thigh. The air around them was thick with the smell of sweat and sex, overpowering the previous aroma of Italian food, and it filled Blake’s senses, fueling the euphoria under his skin and reminding him how thrilling it was to be fucked by a man that meant it.

“You better not have gotten spunk on my couch,” he joked, rolling his head over to the side, still leaning languidly against the electric blue wall. He looked at Chris through heavy half-lidded eyes, a spark of tenderness behind the sarcasm.

Chris chuckled, too exhausted to laugh fully or come up with an acceptable comeback. He eased himself down on the slick hardwood floor, unable to hide the smile spreading across his face. “The breadbox, Blake?” he asked instead, one eyebrow up both inquisitively and seductively, or at least that was how Blake saw it. “Seriously, how much sex do you have in the kitchen to warrant that?”

Blake’s cat-like grin was far from an answer, but Chris knew enough about the idiosyncrasies of Blake Lewis to actually expect some reasoning to such actions. “Nothing like that,” Blake’s voice was sincere and unaffected, the breathy tone and the contented smile on his face telling Chris all that he needed to know. Even if Blake had slept with men exclusively in the kitchen in the past, this time was different, because it was their first…because it was with Chris.

Sliding down his body against the wall, Blake sat along with Chris, his still socked toe tapping out along the hardwood until they reached Chris’s feet. There was something sensual in the hard texture of the polished wooden floor, contrasted with the soft, dreamy look in Chris’s eyes. Blake wanted to slink over to where Chris was on the floor, press his naked body against his and just lay him out against the hardwood – but he was almost too done in to move, still reeling from the sex they just had to attempt a second round. Maybe he was getting too old for casual sex, maybe his body was telling him to fuck in a bed every once in a while.

“Hey.” Blake looked tentatively, almost nervously into Chris’s eyes, a flash of intimacy that had nothing to do with the sex they just had. He was almost too scared to ask, afraid that if the subject was broached Chris would come to his senses, shove his sensibilities fully back in the closet and never see the activist again. But the thought of sleeping tonight without the younger man next to him was just as unpleasant. “Stay here tonight?”

A smile spread across Chris’s face, wistful and happy, and yearning to kiss the uncertainty on Blake’s face away for good. He didn’t even need to ask the question in the first place, really: Chris had already phoned Gina before he started making dinner, slyly suggesting that she needn’t wait up for him that night so she wouldn’t worry. He even set a particular alarm on his phone, the little blue device set to quietly wake him to get to work on time and still leave a generous window for Blake’s personal version of a wake-up alarm.

Sidling over to Blake’s naked frame on the floor, Chris leaned over the smaller man’s body and placed a sweet kiss to his lips. Blake sighed longingly as he tasted traces of both himself and of Chris in that kiss, mixing together to be one pure sensation. “You don’t even need to ask,” he whispered, staring into golden brown eyes and grinning over the thought of waking up to them in the morning.


	10. Fine letters will I write to you with the secrets of my mind

Chris awoke before the sun was silhouetting the Manhattan skyline with a soft groan in his voice, a faint taste of tomato sauce in his mouth and the warm, pliable body of Blake Lewis up against his back. The older man was curved around him, a tattooed arm slung possessively around his chest, fingers unconsciously brushing against a nipple. Faint, hot breath fell regularly against the back of Chris’s neck, and the light snoring coming from the other man sounded almost rhythmical, like Blake was keeping a syncopated beat that resided only in his dreams.

Feeling the stir of arousal in his gut that he attributed more to Blake’s presence all around him and less to morning wood, Chris contemplated just how irritated Blake might be if he woke him up right now. Seemingly with no work to get up early to finish that morning, Blake was planning to enjoy a leisurely slumber with Chris in his arms, and Chris didn’t have enough experience waking up next to his lover yet to determine if the activist was a morning person. Chris thought about slowly sliding out of his grasp, inching himself soundlessly down on the bed and taking Blake’s prick in between his lips, sucking him hard and coherent. Or he could just grind up against Blake’s cock until he felt the response beneath him, a soft chuckle that would reverberate low in Chris’s gut, the hand already on his chest deviously tweaking a nipple.

He considered all of these things, the thoughts warming his body head to toe. But first, he had to take a piss.

Blake made a soft moan of protest as Chris slipped out of his embrace carefully, the officer pausing to peer at his face, the peaceful dreamy look on his features creasing in displeasure. Blake unconsciously gripped the empty sheets beside him, following the warmth of Chris’s frame; Chris thought he would stir, wake up, but Blake’s eyes remained closed in sleep, and soon enough he was softly snoring again, unmoving.

Quickly slipping off to the bathroom, eager to return to those arms and that bed as soon as possible, Chris thought about the events of the past two days, how everything seemed to be flying on its head for him, all for the better. Two days ago he had stood across from St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the navy uniform and his distance from Blake’s protest defining him, his world a set of restrictions and can-nots. He couldn’t fathom how much that changed now, how first hearing Blake like a clear voice of reason over the crowd’s mindless roar seemed to snap him to attention, to action. How finding him again at the Cake Shop led to one of the best conversations – and one of the best orgasms, he might add – Chris had ever experienced. How he had dared to kiss Blake in the middle of the street last night, the fear he had felt like a vise for so many years overwhelmed by affection for the activist.

Chris had to admit – he felt oddly energized, actually almost giddy – that Gina knowing and talking freely about his sexuality was something he could get used to. It felt freeing to know that someone shared this part to his life, that even in his own home he didn’t have to play a role, to try to fool both Gina and himself. They had spoken last afternoon about Blake, how Chris noticed the brightening of his face when he walked into the Cake Shop and the way Belgian waffles would always remind him of Blake’s kiss. But now Chris was eager to get an hour or two to talk to her about himself; about all of the emotions he had denied himself while pretending to be something he wasn’t. He wanted to talk about Blake, to gush, but more than that he wanted to express how much Blake meant to him, even in the short time he’d known him.

Emerging from the bathroom, Chris was greeted by the dark apartment, the sun still long under the horizon, the sodium streetlights along Broome Street not nearly enough to illuminate the room to help him navigate back to bed. Using the soft sound of Blake breathing as his guide, Chris inched back to the bed, his calf knocking against the plush fabric of the purple couch, a startling and sudden discomfort shooting up his leg. He cursed under his breath, fighting against the growing clarity and consciousness in his mind that would make it harder for him to drift back to sleep.

A flood of cool light fell over the apartment, illuminating the corners and crevices Chris was bound to encounter on his way back into bed, bathing the planes of the room in an eerie, unnatural glow. Chris squinted, his eyes adjusting to the new level of light in the apartment; his contact with the couch had jostled the sleek laptop on its cushions, setting it off its sleep mode and bringing the computer screen to life. The officer’s attention was instantly drawn to the light despite his body’s desire to get back into bed with Blake. He battled internally with his mind, which was silently, but quickly clearing of the cobwebs of sleep and focusing on the laptop’s screen. He wished he had just ignored the computer, closed the laptop and slipped back into the older man’s arms, but sheer curiosity and a desire to know more about the man he had bedded prodded him forward.

What Chris had seen on that screen, he wished he had never read.

The laptop’s screen was open to an e-mail window, its tiny black letters burned against the glaringly white background. Someone named Kristi…Blake had never spoke about her before, but Chris attributed that to the fact they simply hadn’t had enough time to divulge everything about their lives to each other in the past two days. It gave Chris a silent thrill to think about all of the details of Blake’s life that he had yet to tell, and the time – the weeks, months…years? – they would both have to learn everything. Even still his curiosity got the better of him and he found himself peering at the screen, the words across the page too tantalizing to ignore.

Kristi seemed less of a friend and more like a colleague; the e-mail had a perfunctory letterhead, self-designed, proclaiming the unknown woman as an established editor. The news intrigued Chris; Blake had only revealed earlier that night that he was a journalist, that his passions ran far deeper than fighting for gay rights and serving drinks to the hipster set. It was a part of Blake Lewis that the man kept guarded, but was very important to him even in his teen years, and because of that Chris was fascinated by it, wanted to read every by-line and blurb. This Kristi was a part of that mysterious life, and Chris couldn’t help but read the e-mail.

_Hey there Mr. Future Pulitzer Winner! You call that a rough draft? It’s brilliant, doll – just needed to make a few technical corrections. (There is a spell check on most word processors, you know.) That harsh view of the cops’ apathy on Monday will definitely go over with the _Gay City _readership; no one wants to have their civil rights trampled upon, but everyone wants to read about it. I’d say make it even more unfavorable, but we don’t want to look like we’re blatantly bashing. That’s the job of the good ol’ NYPD after all, isn’t it?_  
---  
  
Chris waged a war with his body, trying to stop his eyes from widening in realization, his jaw from dropping open as his eyes scrolled the page. It seemed there was a very real reason why Blake had initially kept his real career from Chris, why he still felt the need for vague answers to the officer’s naïve questions about his writing, ignored Chris’s request to read some of his work. He didn’t read the article attached but he didn’t need to, there was all he needed to know in this e-mail, and actually reading the article would only make things worse. Kristi didn’t mention Blake including any details about a certain green-eyed off-duty officer breaking convention and helping Blake out of a guaranteed losing brawl, but if it did Chris would feel even more exposed than ever before…and by a man he thought he was starting to trust with every facet of his life.

The e-mail continued and despite the sinking, nauseous feeling building in the pit of his stomach that had nothing to do with Chicken Parmesan, Chris found his hand reaching out to the mousepad on the laptop, fingers shaking as he scrolled down to unread text. It was no longer playful fascination that was urging him on but a morbid demand by the fears that still resided deep inside. He needed to know how much Kristi knew, how much Blake had divulged…if he was going to be called in to One Police Plaza for damage control as the early edition of _Gay City_ went on newsstands Thursday morning.

_By the way, congrats on the cop – yes I do read what you write to me other than what’s in your article copy! Hope he’s putting those cuffs to good use, if you know what I mean. I’m seeing some crazy exposé information here – drill him but do it subtly, find out about all the skeletons the NYPD is keeping in the closet along with All-American there. We could do a whole multi-installment piece, maybe front-page material – this could even go to something bigger, I’m thinking_ New York _magazine, maybe even the_ Times _. This could be your ticket, babe – hit me back and tell me what you think. Hope the face is doing better from Monday – that cop of yours a good nurse as well?_  
---  
  
For a moment all the air was drained in the apartment; Chris couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even gasp out a breath over this information. It felt like the floor fell away from him and he was dropping, free-falling while standing still, unable to move despite all of his muscles screaming to run, to rage, to throw things. He wanted to read the letter over to refute what he had just seen, to run with the hope that the words had changed since the last time, but his eyes were clouding over with emotion and thick confusion and the screen started to blur. But he didn’t have to see the letter again to know the gravity of these words, of the syllables pricking through his skin and what it all meant.

So he turned from the glare of the computer screen, realizing only with the sudden movement of his head that the cloudiness in his vision was moisture, tears he was refusing to shed. His gaze fell upon Blake in the bed, still asleep, the cool white light from the laptop illuminating him in a ghostly, unnatural glow. But it wasn’t the same Blake Lewis Chris had gone to bed with earlier that night; it wasn’t the man who locked eyes with him across a violent crowd at the St. Patrick’s Day Parade, or yearned for something real the first night Chris had kissed him.

Chris was afraid he didn’t even know the Blake Lewis he had slept with that night.

A heavy, unpleasant weight was sinking into his chest, reminding him of the burn of breathlessness after a run but exactly the opposite, a bone-crushing feeling from doing nothing at all. He soon found himself able to move, the blood still flowing to his fingers and legs despite all of it that was rushing to his head in this fit of confusion. Was what Kristi wrote true – was Blake writing scathing articles that blasted the NYPD? Was he planning to write another, to further his career, at the expense of Chris? Was everything Blake had said to him in the last few days a lie to get closer to him, to get him into bed and then expose him?

He couldn’t think about all of this now, couldn’t make his brain function in the logical fashion he learned about in college – his professors said he had the mind of a detective but he never thought he’d have to play the role in these circumstances. There was too much sensory stimuli in the room that was fueling his emotions instead of his brain, the smell of sex still lingering in the apartment air, the fresh memory of Blake’s skin on his, Blake all around him, and the harsh glare of the e-mail still on the computer screen. His needed to get into some open air, a place to think that wasn’t flooding his senses with all things Blake. He needed somewhere to go to think about whether he wanted to get back into bed with Blake’s arms around him again.

The light of the computer screen cast shadows across the floorboards and illuminated the path of shed clothing the two men left from the kitchen sink to the bed. Chris picked up the scattered bits of his clothes – he wasn’t even going to hazard a guess as to how his sock got thrown atop Blake’s turntable – and dressed quickly, avoiding casting a glance over towards the bed once more lest he unwisely change his mind. He needed some time and some place to think, and he doubted he could come to an even conclusion in Blake’s bed. And with the way Blake had been telling him about his career – feeding facts to Chris like breadcrumbs, one at a time, leading him along a trail of his choosing – he doubted confronting him about it would do any good.

The remainder of the ingredients Chris had brought over for the dinner could stay in the kitchen; he was planning on letting Blake keep them anyway after seeing the dismal condition of the activist’s fresh food supplies. He slid a hand unconsciously against the waistband of his jeans right before he silently exited the apartment, the dawn soon approaching through Blake’s windows. His palm made contact with the cool, sharp brass of his badge; at least that, with all of the trappings and restrictions that badge put him through, was something Chris could trust.

***

His bed was cold and the sun was shining bright like floodlights by the time Blake awoke, the first thought absently cruising through his mind that Chris’s phone, beloved as it was, had failed him and he’d be late for work again. No police force in the nation would be pleased if this track record went on; Blake would have to invest in a reliable alarm clock or let Chris face possible dismissal, and although that _could_ help solve some problems it would obviously cause others. The most logical course of action in Blake’s head was for the couple to start staying over at Chris’s apartment.

As cognition slowly crept back into Blake’s mind he recognized the cool and empty expanse of sheets beside him, far too cold to have just been vacated for a quick piss. Blake’s hand groped against the wrinkled cotton, stretched out until his elbow locked at the socket, fingers curling over the edge of the mattress and a crease of worry forming on his forehead. His eyes were still closed, his body instinctively fighting to go back to sleep, but his mind soon began to piece together the fact that Chris hadn’t been in bed with him for a long time.

“Chris…” he groaned groggily against his pillow, softly smiling at the sound of the other man’s name on his lips the first thing in the morning. He was longing to hear the sound of socked feet padding over to the bed, feel the soft contact of lips on his to wake him. Perhaps Chris was surprising him with a breakfast this morning just as Blake had surprised the officer the day before: he dreamed fancifully of Italian bread French toast, eggs sizzling in the griddle, a gorgeous and tender man to serve it all to him. He grinned wickedly thinking about the many ways he and Chris could let that breakfast get cold.

But Blake didn’t smell any breakfast cooking, didn’t hear the sounds of a man moving around his kitchen, humming softly to the jazz music they had played the night before. No trace of Chris at all by scent or sound, no thrilling feeling of the other man’s skin underneath Blake’s fingers or his breath on his ear. This was what finally set off the flare in his mind, his brow creasing with the discomfort of the morning sun as he slowly transitioned from blissful, oblivious sleep to waking realization. He opened his eyes and the clear and painful absence of Chris’s presence became evident to him: his clothing was all gone along with the officer, quashing any ideas that he had possibly fallen asleep in the bathroom. The apartment lacked any signs that Blake had gone to bed with someone that night save for the dirty dishes in the sink, like Chris’s presence itself was a part of Blake’s dream, just a shadow.

A deep disappointment sank in Blake’s chest; he gripped the cold sheets beside him as he rose to a sitting position, the full ache in his bones clearly reminding him that his night with Chris had not been just a fabrication of his mind. It had been real, in more than one sense of the word, and Blake didn’t understand why Chris wouldn’t have even woken him up to say goodbye, or promise he’d call later in the day. When Blake had requested Chris stay the night with him, he was expecting the younger man to actually be there for the morning as well.

The sunlight from the monumental left windows dominated the small apartment but there was also some other source of light, dimmer than the morning but a different hue, unnatural. Blake sat up, his mind still running through the muddled possibilities of why Chris had left so unceremoniously when he noticed the light, casting strange shadows across the hardwood floor. His laptop was on and open, the sleep mode having been disturbed sometime during the night. Blake was typically lax when it came to the care of his laptop: he was quite aware of this, but even he remembered the laptop being dormant when he and Chris had finally retired to the bed – after soft touches and even softer words were whispered on the floor, after Chris had kissed Blake like he meant to wake up to his face every morning. Now it was on, and Blake’s eyes widened with the quick memory of the e-mail he had left on the screen.

It was all coming together now, making sense in blurring, jagged ways Blake didn’t want it to. The computer supposedly knocked out of its sleep cycle; the e-mail from his editor and good friend with its typical compliments on his writing style. The fact that Chris had left a long time ago without even a second glance. Blake groaned, the dread sinking down deep into his gut, and he closed his eyes remorsefully, wishing this really was all a dream.

“Oh, _shit_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Blake writes for, and Kristi edits for, [Gay City news](http://gaycitynews.com/), a free, weekly newspaper set in the New York metropolitan area focusing on noteworthy news for the LGBT community. It's extremely liberal, naturally, and routinely criticizes authoritative organizations and government leaders such as the NYPD on their relationships with the LGBT community. It's a click to the left of [The Village Voice](http://www.villagevoice.com/) which is another weekly free newspaper that focuses on news relating to Greenwich Village, East Village, Alphabet City, etc., which at times is synonymous with the NYC LGBT community. The latter newspaper has gotten massively commercial over the years so I wanted to put Blake at a more radical publication.
> 
> Many times writers will have only one editor they work with at a publication: they know the writer's strengths and weaknesses, what topics they'll want to cover the most, and how to edit and market their work to make it print-ready. Kristi is Blake's filter in this sense, lol, but in the process of making his work as great as it possibly could be, she's making a name for herself as an editor as well. Editors also oftentimes pitch story ideas to the writers since they presumably know not only what stories are interesting and the writer can handle, but what will be marketable and to what demographics. Kristi refers to [New York](http://nymag.com/) magazine, which is a weekly publication with style guides and news articles that are of a higher editorial quality than newspaper copy; an investigative exposé on the NYPD and their misgivings on gay and closeted officers would fit very nicely with their style. The other publication she mentions is [The New York Times](http://nytimes.com), which is a daily newspaper but also has a weekly Sunday magazine that is _New York magazine_ 's biggest competition.


	11. And there are no words to be spoken, just the look to say goodbye

If Chris Richardson could say one positive thing about himself – purely positive and not disclaimed with qualifiers, like he was fit and athletic now but hadn’t always been – it was that he was a good cop. Chris put his drive, his blood and sweat into the job he and his fellow officers believed to be more a calling than a career. He came to New York with a full suitcase and an acceptance letter into recruitment for the NYPD Academy. The passion he had for saving people and making a difference never faded after the long, arduous days of physical exertion, and hours in the classroom memorizing by-laws and procedure. His salary was dismal, the respect for the uniform nearly nonexistent, but he never let those detriments faze him because that uniform, was who he was. He was a good cop, a damn good one if he wanted to embellish, and it was the one part about himself he could feel proud to claim.

Blake Lewis had made him feel, for two fleeting days, that he might be able to feel proud and confident about more in his life than simply being a good cop.

He had been feeling lighter than air since he met Blake; maybe that was the reason he hadn’t noticed anything before, he had been too blind with infatuation that the withheld information didn’t seem that important, didn’t send off red flares in his mind. Blake was charming, easygoing, with an attractive face and eyes Chris had wanted to believe were honest. And despite their differences in lifestyle, in the way Chris shielded his sexuality behind a badge and Blake championed it pinned to his chest, Chris had been feeling comfortable with the activist in ways he never allowed himself before. Acts like kissing on the street that he restricted himself from before were second nature with Blake, where laughing and touching were as natural and beautiful as thinking and breathing.

Chris thought he had been finding something special with Blake, something that he wouldn’t be afraid to call a relationship in front of friends and family. His career was the breaking point, the line drawn in his life that Chris, even with his newfound freedom, felt too nervous to cross. Now he was justified, almost relieved, to have never made that jump.

It had been a long ride back from Blake’s apartment to Bay Ridge, but at each screech of the train car’s brakes Chris’s mind was racing. He ran all the details of the e-mail through the logic streams of his mind and paired it up with what he knew about Blake – which by the minute, seemed to be much less than he would have initially thought.

When he arrived back in his apartment his thoughts, left to stew silently on the train, were bubbling at a fever pitch, the confusion that began at Blake’s apartment transitioning into anger and frustration over being duped. With his jaw clenched Chris strode past a yawning Gina without a word. If he had been wrong about Blake – about his feelings for the activist, wrong about letting him into his life – then maybe he had been wrong about everything. The freedom he had been feeling when he was with Blake, that slow, blushing joy, had come at a price, and so perhaps his willingness to talk to Gina about his sexuality would have a give-and-take as well. Chris didn’t think he could handle more betrayal, more of the walls torn down that he had spent years carefully constructing.

Stripping himself out of last night’s clothes – the ones that still smelled of Blake – Chris readied himself for a shower, brutally cold so he might snap himself out of this nightmare. He had a full shift ahead of him, and he looked forward to losing himself in his work, to do the job he had come to New York for and leave everything else behind. It didn’t even occur to him that his train of thought, the one he was allowing to roll down a snowy slope like a snowball and turn into an avalanche, was far from logical.

Yes, Chris was a good cop, a damn good cop; perhaps he had tried for too much, he wanted two different lives. And because he let Blake in he might lose both. If Blake went through with the second article, if he threw Chris to the media wolves and revealed his secret, it could mean much more than dubious glances at the stationhouse. Maybe there was no way for Chris to have it all, to be a cop and to be himself. Inside the shower, under the spray of an ice-cold stream of water, Chris leaned his forehead against the cool tile, digging his nails into the grout, and wept.

***

Blake had wasted no time in trying to track down Chris once he discovered the younger man was gone from the apartment and the supposed reason behind it. After sending a quick and curt reply to Kristi and not bothering to wait for a response, Blake took to the online White Pages in search of his officer. There were at least nine Christopher Richardsons living Brooklyn, and a dozen more C Richardsons, and who even knew if the officer was listed? It was a slim possibility that Blake would ever be able to find Chris but he had to try, had to at the very least explain to him the reasoning behind that e-mail. He could have called him, but with the way Chris had left soundlessly in the night without so much as a kiss goodbye Blake doubted he would pick up.

He was dressed in five minutes, on the R train to Brooklyn in ten, and taking the long, grueling local path to Bay Ridge with a list of addresses in his hand and determination on his face. It was hard to admit to himself but Chris _meant_ something to Blake, he could feel it in the moment their eyes had met at the parade, calming pools of green when all around them chaos stirred. He could tell Chris had felt this connection as well, knew that it would only be confirmed at the Cake Shop that night; strengthened. When Chris pressed his lips to his, Blake had wanted it to last forever; when he held him in his arms that first night Blake wanted to memorize every inch of flesh and muscle until he knew it as well as his own.

What he had been feeling – what Chris had, from no fault of his own, been making him feel – was something Blake hadn’t experienced in a long time, the desire to be with someone and to know them inside and out and never be able to get enough. Chris made him giddy as a teenager again, butterflies nestling happily in his stomach at the memories of skin against hot skin. And that kiss he gave to Blake outside his apartment – open, in broad daylight, a short kiss but a tender nonetheless – well, David Hernandez be damned, those were not the actions of a man who was running from his sexuality.

This man, this relationship, whatever it might be – it was something Blake was willing to fight for.

Bay Ridge wasn’t a neighborhood of Brooklyn Blake was very well-acquainted with – he didn’t ever spend much time in the borough but he had gone with David to visit his mother in Crown Heights a few times and traveled to the new underground music venues in Williamsburg at Cook’s recommendations. Brooklyn was still uncharted territory for Blake the activist literally finding everything he needed in Manhattan. He wasn’t morally against the borough like Danny but it was more of a strange land, a grid of avenues and streets Blake knew little about.

> _“Not even Coney Island?” Brandon had once asked him, cocking an eyebrow over his Sunday diner omelet after a particularly wild night the details of which Blake couldn’t remember. The blond stuck to dry toast, not trusting his stomach with more savory contents. Ace, the group’s substitute for Danny when the previous night’s activities held an age prerequisite, was the healthy one with a neatly sliced grapefruit; David was only having coffee, black._
> 
> _Blake shook his head no; he believed in real thrills in life rather than fabricated ones, and his skin tone didn’t quite accommodate the beach. Brandon frowned disapprovingly, silently denouncing Blake as culturally deficient; Ace commented that he had even found time during college to check out the hot dog eating contest, but left when he failed to convince the beer vendors his then-fake ID was legitimate._
> 
> _David snorted in disinterest and squinted behind dark Ray-Bans. “Coney Island’s full of posers, anyway,” he said with the world-weary affectation that only came from living in the borough for too long. “It’s closing soon anyway, and good riddance. All of Brooklyn; screw the whole lot of them.”_
> 
> _The activist quirked an eyebrow at his friend as he nibbled on a corner of his toast. He knew David had resentment for his childhood home but he had never considered it more than any other expatriate scorning the motherland. But there was something in David’s voice that made Blake think there was more to his ire than that. “There are some good neighborhoods, I guess,” David changed his tune with a shrug, nursing his coffee. “Bad ones too, just like any city. And in some of those neighborhoods…” David’s jaw set, the sunglasses shielding flashes of bad memories in his eyes. “You don’t want to be a gay man caught down a dark alley.”_

Blake wished that, when they had that conversation months ago, he had questioned if Bay Ridge was one of those neighborhoods.

Passing by storefronts with tattered strings of shamrocks still up from two days ago, the Irish roots running deep through these streets, Blake pulled his jacked tighter against the wind, the bright sun doing little to cut the sting of the cool morning. He approached the next address on his list with a sigh; this was the third Chris Richardson Blake had found in Bay Ridge, and to be honest he was getting a little annoyed at how generic and popular the officer’s name appeared to be.

The doorbell chimed within the townhouse; Blake hoped Chris wouldn’t peek through the Venetian blinds to catch a glimpse of Blake, then turn off the lights and pretend no one was home. Blake wasn’t going to let Chris run away from something that could be beautiful between them, no matter how that e-mail made him out to be.

The door opened; Blake’s heart jumped in his ribcage without realizing that it would. A raven-haired girl still clad in pajamas answered the door, eyes half-closed between a tired gaze and a glower. A toothbrush hung precariously from her mouth. “We don’t want any,” she grumbled, her eyes narrowing in irritation.

“Sorry,” Blake’s heart sank; yet another door that held a dead end behind it, a disheartening string of gag prizes when he was searching for that brand new car. “I was just…does a Chris Richardson live here? I thought…” he gestured wildly to try to get to his point, but feared it only made him look even crazier. “Or I could just be talking out of my ass here and you could slam the door in my face…”

“Wait.” The woman blinked, squinting to an extreme Blake knew he mimicked when he was without glasses or contacts. She pulled the toothbrush out of her mouth, scrutinizing the man at her doorstep, the look on her face giving away the cogs working in her head, determining if the man standing before her was a robber, a Jehovah’s Witness, or… “Are you Blake?”

To be called startled would be an understatement; the question took the activist so much by surprise he stumbled back, holding onto the red brick of the building for support. The woman smiled a minty, frothy grin. “Wow, you’re even shorter than I imagined,” she observed, looking him up and down; Blake felt like he should be offended by that but the thought that this woman knew who he was – that Chris supposedly had been talking about him to another – clouded all else in his mind. “Cute, though.”

Before Blake could say another word, and perhaps protest that the two adjectives she used were similarly used to describe wishniks, a manicured hand and a toothbrush invaded his line of vision. “I’m Gina, Chris’s roommate,” she introduced herself, then pulled back the hand with the brush when she realized what she had done. “Oh! Well, that would make it hard to shake, wouldn’t it?” She placed the brush back in her mouth briefly to free her hand, reaching over to give Blake’s a friendly vigorous shake. Chris had mentioned a roommate once before, when he commented affectionately on Blake’s ineptitude in the kitchen, but he never mentioned her by name or gender; he had imagined another cop, male, squat and round with a penchant for Hot Pockets. From the rebellious magenta streaks in her hair to the design on her pajama pants – skulls with oversized bows atop their craniums – Blake thought this woman to be an interesting roommate for a man so reserved.

“Chris has told me all about you,” she said with a wink, her mumbled words barely coherent through the toothbrush. Gina turned her head towards the interior of the apartment, called for Chris loud enough to run through the thin walls. Blake released her hand so she could speak to him unhindered by the brush, wondering with more than innocent curiosity just how much Chris was open to sharing with Gina about the new man that had burst into his life. “Come on in! God, it must have been a hell of a train ride to get here; that’s dedication.”

Blake simply nodded and smiled as Gina held open the door for him, choosing to stay silent over just how dedicated he had planned to be in order to find Chris, the remainder of the C. Richardsons list crumpled in his back pocket. The apartment was dimly lit but cozy, the northern-facing windows only displaying the crisp March sunlight but not embracing it through the panes. The décor style, as Brandon would probably dub it, was wholly representative of a college graduate’s first apartment on their own: squashy, comfortable furniture either purchased at discount or given as cast-off pieces from friends upgrading from their own first apartment décor. The result was a jumbled, mismatched living room set, a fading leather couch paired with a delicate cream highback chair, two tables stacked together to make one in the kitchen, a wall unit that most probably had dots above the vowels in its name.

Gina waved her toothbrush through the air with a flourish as Blake took in his surroundings. “Our humble abode,” she said on her way to the bathroom. “I’d offer you something but my hospitality genes don’t kick in until after 10 AM. Besides, I’m sure Chris will want to be the gracious host, no matter what the hour.” Blake didn’t bother to correct her, to inform her that Chris had left Blake’s apartment without saying a word, the apartment brutally frigid even with the sun streaming in. Chris had obviously not spoken about the incident to Gina and Blake wasn’t going to use the confusion of that morning as an ice-breaker between them.

“How the hell did you find me here?” The voice behind him - light Southern twang, not deep enough to hide the hurt behind that tone – told Blake that he would not have to explain anything between him and Chris to Gina any further.

Blake whirled around to face the man behind the voice, the officer he was willing to search every street in Brooklyn for. Chris stood straight-backed and dressed in his full patrol uniform, the bulky navy cotton doing nothing to make Blake forget the toned definition of his frame. It was quite a different look from the ceremonial, starched navy suit Chris had donned the first time Blake had seen him at the parade, the stiff lapels and cap infusing authority and mystique into Chris’s character; this uniform was built for function, the raw, rough material reflecting something rugged yet bringing out the subdued beauty in Chris’s eyes. There was something brutally masculine about that uniform and the way it covered Chris’s body, the brass badge gleaming even in the low light; it had nothing to do with the cold stern expression on Chris’s face boring into Blake.

Sensing a tension in the air and a resentful bite in Chris’s tone that certainly wasn’t there the day before when he gushed about Blake, Gina quickly excused herself with a toothpaste-full mumble, patting her roommate sympathetically on the shoulder as she passed. “I approve,” she whispered simply, giving Chris a sincere smile as his stare flickered over to her briefly; he hadn’t been searching for her acceptance of Blake, not at the moment, but Gina thought Chris needed some kind of encouragement, a sign of approval for the activist in their living room and everything that came along with it.

Blake waited for the woman to retreat to the bathroom and for the shower faucet’s telltale burst of rushing water to answer Chris; he didn’t want her to hear their conversation, not when even he didn’t know where this might lead. Besides, the image of Chris standing before him in full uniform, his jaw set, fresh green eyes popping against the dark navy, the cotton hiding the body Blake knew was underneath, had felt was underneath those layers…it was leaving the older man a bit tongue-tied. He briefly considered forgoing the explanation and striding across the living room, strong-arming the other man with kisses into his bedroom and not coming out until he stripped away every last stitch of that uniform off of him. The look on Chris’s face, the way his nostrils flared with a simmering anger he had learned like every other emotion to suppress, made Blake hold his position next to an armchair. That whole nightstick fantasy was going to have to wait for another time.

“A good journalist never reveals his sources,” Blake tried to joke, to get a rise out of Chris and hopefully break the tension holding in the room; no such luck. The activist grew serious, earnest; this was something he had to get through to the other man. “That’s what I am, you know,” he insisted. “A good. Journalist.” He was no paparazzo, writing fraudulent gossip columns or a fabricator of newsworthy stories just for the thrill of seeing his name in print. He had an editorial integrity that was there years before he had ever met Chris, a passion for his writing and for the truth that rivaled Chris’s passion for his own career.

“Of course.” Blake had never heard Chris’s voice like this before, so distant and cold. The closest he had ever heard to anything but a sweet summer drawl was the angry, rough growl when Chris restrained Blake’s aggressor at the parade, and the animal, pleading moans into the older man’s ear as he came. But all of those were laced with emotion, either positive or negative; this to Blake was empty of all that, like Chris had given up on emotion, resigned himself to this. “That’s what matters to you, right? Being a good journalist, that’s everything. Over being a bartender, a gay rights activist, a decent human being –“

“Hey,” the older man began to protest but Chris cut him off, his tolerance paper-thin.

“I read the e-mail.” Chris’s gaze was unnerving, causing Blake to look away, duck his head and mutter “I know.” The words didn’t seem good enough for Chris, not nearly as accusatory as he wanted it to be ever since he had read of Blake’s plans in that e-mail. “So that’s what this was all about, huh? Was the parade just a story for you? I’m not about to condone what those cops allowed to happen, but damn it, Blake, you make it sound like for the NYPD gay-bashing is just another Monday.”

 _All in a day’s work,_ Blake thought bitterly, his typical answer to those that questioned the spin of his articles, though this time he held his tongue on a phrase that wouldn’t have made the situation any better. He wasn’t going to lie and say the article was anywhere near flattering – he knew what the article would look like to a man of the law, but he had his integrity – but Blake felt like he needed to say something to diffuse the power of Chris’s accusations. “I didn’t name names,” was all he could muster.

“Because you didn’t have names,” Chris continued easily. “But if you did you wouldn’t have thought twice about using them, would you.” Blake had to bite down on his tongue from Chris’s words, far more a statement than a question, because he knew he would have, he would’ve made sure to make every man, woman and child reading his words know what the police force thought of peaceful gay protests. “How about Gracin, Tabaldo; Stacey. Ever come across those names in your investigations? Those are some of my colleagues, my friends. And they –“ Chris sneered, not at the thought of the few bad apples at the parade, but the families of his friends, their careers, if they were ever caught under Blake Lewis’s steamroller. “Are _good cops_.”

Blake didn’t know many police officers, never cared to: he didn’t ever have personal vendettas against the force save for Monday morning, but he had heard enough stories of depraved indifference, of the historical raids and shakedowns to keep him away. He knew where Chris was coming from, but he felt the same emotion for the opposite end of the spectrum: he cared about giving a voice to the voiceless, to Danny Noriega and all the others who, no matter how hard they screamed, were never really heard. Chris was protecting his friends from the perceived threat of Blake’s writing; Blake was protecting his friends with those same words.

Shaking his head, Chris continued, his eyes down to the floor because he couldn’t look at the man he had thought had genuine feelings for him only a few hours ago. “I wouldn’t even know how to tell them the man I’m sleeping with is the one writing these awful articles.”

This set Blake off, turning from the defensive to the offense with a bitter tone. “Or,” he said, the doubt that hadn’t left his mind rearing its ugly head. “You wouldn’t know how to tell them the man writing these articles is also sleeping with you.”

The accusation didn’t fall on deaf ears: Chris looked up, expression of shock and startled hurt flashing across his face. He and Blake never talked about how open Chris was about his sexuality, save for their brief, muted pillow talk their first night together, but Chris realized Blake Lewis was no fool. If he hadn’t recognized Chris’s secret right as he had met him, he would have gathered the answer in time; Chris never allowed men to wait around long enough to guess. Blake was the first to really question Chris’s philosophies, make him wonder if all those years keeping who he was a secret from everyone had been really worth it. It was the first time – Blake with a passion for the debate and for Chris in his eyes – Chris began to feel ashamed of feeling ashamed.

“Let’s be real here, _officer_ ,” Blake spread the words out, finally finding his voice and his own anger over his career and his very lifestyle being put under scrutiny by Chris. “If I was writing movie reviews none of this would even be an issue. But I write what I write…what is important for others to know. You’re freaking out because now your buddies back at the stationhouse just might find out who you really are.”

“With good reason,” Chris answered quickly.

“And what would be so wrong with that?” Blake hadn’t meant to raise his voice but there it was, the change in volume evident to his ears and the wincing, squared jaw before him. This was the problem David tried to get across to Blake, the problem with being with Chris that he tried to ignore just to be with him: Chris did think there was something wrong with being open about himself, of being different but not worse than everyone’s expectations of him. Perhaps it was the badge and the uniform that stopped Chris from accepting himself, or maybe it was something within him, the same thing that kept him at arms’ length right now, both physically and emotionally, from Blake.

He continued, finding a sickeningly easy rhythm with which to argue. “Were you hoping to just fly under the radar with me – screw me on the side, run around with this damn secret forever? ‘Cause I’d really like to be informed if you plan on using me like that.”

“But I guess you didn’t have to inform me if you’re going to use me.” Chris’s voice was a stark contrast to Blake’s shouting, a cool, eerie low timber, not raised but more dangerous than if he was screaming. “Fuck me, then drag my name through shit along with the rest of the force…all on your way to the front page, eh, Blake.”

That second part of the e-mail hurt more than Chris was willing to admit to anyone, particularly Blake at this point: it was the idea that Blake cared more about a story than about Chris’s feelings or a burgeoning relationship, that everything that had happened between them since the St. Patrick’s Day Parade had been lies. It was one thing to attack the police force Chris worked with and believed in, but this was a personal betrayal, life’s punishment for Chris for ever thinking he could have a future with another man.

The blood in Blake’s veins ran cold, his eyes wide and mouth dry. Kristi’s e-mail was damning enough without her suggesting the sleazy investigation. Blake knew his editor and friend was only looking out for Blake’s career interests, aiming to elevate them both in the cutthroat publishing business; but where Kristi saw fame and dollar bills Blake saw a different kind of green, the entrancing shade found only in Chris Richardson’s eyes. The story pitch left a disgusting, bitter taste in Blake’s mouth that not even the sweet kisses Chris gave him last night could melt away.

“I wasn’t going to do the story,” he protested, but even to his own ears his voice sounded weak, and he knew Chris would pick up on the vulnerability as insincerity.

“How can I believe you now?’ Blake had hesitated to tell Chris of his real profession, what he truly loved to do between filling beer glasses and organizing protests and rallies; who knew what else he planned to keep from him?

Blake shrugged, defeated. “You’re gonna believe what you want,” he said.

“That first night,” the nerves piques by the argument made Chris want to push the question, go that curious step further that had been in the back of his mind since he left Blake’s apartment. “When you said you wanted something real. Did you mean it?” He swallowed the lump in his throat, his right hand clenching into a fist at his side while the other nervously fidgeted with the coarse material clothing his thigh. He wasn’t going to tear up at this, absolutely refused to cry about Blake while he was in uniform. “Or were you looking to say anything to get me in bed with you?”

He struck a particularly sensitive chord with Blake; Chris shouldn’t be the one out of the pair to question the other’s sincerity. “I could ask you the same thing,” he replied, voice sounding hollow even to his own ears.

Sadness flashed in Chris’s eyes, bur just as quickly it was replaced with resentment; resignation. “That’s not an answer.” He turned away from Blake, his eyes cast down to the floor, his voice even despite the bitterness he was feeling in his heart. “I’m going to make myself a cup of coffee,” he stated as he faced the kitchen, his back to Blake. “Then I’m going to work. And by the time I’m done with it…I expect you to be gone.”

Blake shook his head but said nothing; Chris had said all of the words, had ended their argument on his terms and there was nothing Blake could do about it. It had been a fool’s bet to think that he could put any sense into Chris’s thoughts about the e-mail, about Blake’s career. It seemed clear to him now that Chris wasn’t looking for a reason to believe Blake or to discredit Kristi’s e-mail, but instead a reason to distance himself from the activist, to push him away before the relationship got too emotional and real. This, Blake thought bitterly, was his excuse to back away from his own heart.

Without another word Chris disappeared into the kitchen, unseen tears threatening his batting eyelashes. He didn’t watch Blake’s jaw clench, his fists ball up in frustration, as the older man swung open the front door and stormed out, and back to the security of his own borough.


	12. Stop rushing like hell, and remember all is not what it seems to be

The door slammed so hard it rattled the old windowpanes, jarring David out of his sleep hours before he usually awoke in the early afternoon. It took a few seconds to realize that this was his apartment and he wasn’t awakening to some raging ex or a scorned lover finding him in someone else’s bed; a few more seconds and he surmised he wasn’t being robbed, not that the young man had much of value to take. And in three more short seconds, David realized that he probably shouldn’t have given his good friend Blake a spare key.

“Y’know, I could’ve been in here with someone,” David grumbled groggily as he watched Blake pace around the room, a figure of frustrated, angry energy built up over the subway ride there. “Maybe I had found the man of my dreams last night. The Richard Gere to my poor old Julia Roberts ass.” He slung a lazy arm over his eyes as he stretched his carefully toned body on the bed, the silent scowl on Blake’s face a clear sign he wasn’t going back to sleep.

Blake gave a snort, alternating his gaze from David to the grimy windowpanes, everything that had been released in his argument with Chris bouncing around in his head, making him jittery and ill at ease. “You didn’t get laid last night, D,” he said, shaking his head.

A wicked, indulgent smile spread across David’s face under the cover of his forearm. “No, but did _you_?” His voice was lazy and teasing, expecting Blake to break out into a grin, jump right into a scintillating narrative on last night’s exploits, like always. But only silence filled the room, and although David had a pretty good inkling that Blake’s evening with his new man ended fairly well and fairly late in the morning, the blond told him nothing.

“Shorty?” he asked with slight interest, peeking out from underneath his arm. Still no answer, and Blake’s gaze was right on David, the thin exterior of anger showing spots of vulnerability to the hurt he felt on the inside. It was all in his eyes, the strained squinted redness of holding back tears, the feeling of being so lost after falsely imagining he had really been found. David furrowed his brow; he could already tell Blake was in no mood for jokes. “Blake?”

Blake’s voice was hoarse, like he had spent a while yelling in exasperation and an even longer period of time in his head screaming at himself. He was hesitant, not ready at first to tell David what happened, to say the words aloud because then it really was over. David sat up, his mind blinking awake at the urgent look on his friend’s face. “You were right.”

“Fuck.” Running a hand through his dark hair, David for once cursed his cynical foresight: this time, for Blake’s sake, he had wanted to be wrong about the officer. It was clear to him that Blake was falling for Chris like he never had before, going deeply and blindly into that blissful stage of coupledom and not looking back. David had tried to warn him but he already knew Blake wasn’t going to listen, and with the few minutes of seeing and meeting Officer Richardson David couldn’t blame him. This was a conclusion his friend had to come to himself, had to have the harsh reality of the fantasy he was building up revealed to him; David wished he didn’t have to go through it. “What happened?”

Blake shook his head, his jaw clenched to stop it from trembling at the memories of their argument, Chris’s accusatory words in his mind. “He’s not…” he began, but cut himself off, not quite sure if he wanted to relive it, the emotion so fresh and wounded, like damaged skin after a tattoo. “He’s not who I thought he was.” His eyes locked with David’s, who sat up, fully attentive to Blake’s dilemma. “This is your cue to say, ‘I told you so,’ you know,” he said, attempting to smile but mustering up only a pathetic curl of his upper lip.

David wasn’t taking the hint on that one, even if Blake had served up and gift-wrapped the opportunity to gloat. That wasn’t what his friend needed right now. “Do you need to talk about it?” he asked instead. “Lemme get dressed…”

“I gotta get to work anyway…” Blake said with a wave of his hand, and David remarked to himself that wasn’t Blake saying he didn’t want to talk about it. Even when all of his emotions were right at the surface, after all that he had wanted crashed down upon him, Blake still had his damn pride and wouldn’t admit he wanted to talk. David knew him well enough by now to see when Blake needed a friend, or a drink, or a good slap in the face.

“I’ll walk with you,” the other man insisted, shaking off the covers and making a beeline for the dresser.

The blond’s face was unresponsive to David’s words, not accepting his offer but not refusing the company, either. Any other time, with any other man, Blake would have done the same thing: gone to see David, night or day, whether it be at home, work or one of his many routine haunts. He would have fumed over the breakup, with David nodding and contributing to his anger-fueled rant, perhaps punch a wall and bring back bruised knuckles. Then David would crack a joke, Blake coming in with a quick and usually vulgar comeback, they’d laugh and get a drink, find someone new and restart the cycle. Chris, Blake had been sure of it, was different: just the fact that Blake couldn’t laugh off the dense burn of emotion in the pit of his stomach, couldn’t drink away the feeling that Chris had felt right beside him…these things told him the officer had been different, at least in this sense.

Slipping on a shirt and jeans in record time, David slung an arm around his friend’s shoulders as he grabbed his jacket from the chair he had thrown it over the night before. He knew Blake would begin to talk when he felt comfortable enough to do so, and if he needed David was willing to hang around the mind-numbingly mundane Cake Shop to hear all of it. He had nothing better to do during the day anyway, and he already realized Blake hadn’t burst into his apartment just to stand there silently and pout.

“Come on,” he said reassuringly, opening the apartment door, stricken suddenly by the wash of emotions on Blake’s face like he had never seen before. “I’m sure Cook’s got a lemon poppy seed muffin with your name on it, and if he doesn’t I’m sure lots of liquor will handle that problem.” As the two walked out onto First Avenue and Blake began to tell the details of that morning’s argument and where everything had begun to unravel, David listened silently, an enmity for the officer that could cut his friend so deep and leave him a mess growing by the minute. This was going to take a lot more than baked goods and alcohol to mend.

***

“Did something crawl up your ass and _die_ , Richardson?”

Chris had to bite his lip hard enough to draw blood to stop himself from correcting Phil that the situation did involve ass but not quite in that fashion, but nevertheless something did indeed die.

When Chris didn’t answer right away, his gaze to the floor and hands shoved into the pockets of his windbreaker somewhere between Atlantic Avenue and 25th Street, Phil knew without words that Chris was closing himself off, avoiding his partner while still physically in the same train car. He pressed on despite that unspoken yet intact agreement between the two officers not to pry; this was beginning to affect Chris’s work performance, whatever mood the younger man had put himself in, and Phil was the man to snap him out of it before it became habitual. He’d hate to see a good, optimistic cop full of potential like Chris go to waste.

“That guy over there –“ Phil pointed to a man hunched over at the far-end of the car, black facial hair spotted with gray, slipping in and out of slumber; Chris looked over, following Phil’s direction, but without moving his head or putting any effort into the action. “He could’ve stalked right over, sucker-punched you, taken your weapon and went on a killing spree three times over by now.” He shook his head, the harshness in his voice rare but only meant for something serious. “Your head’s somewhere else right now…I don’t know where, but it sure isn’t on the job.”

Chris shrugged, still not looking Phil in the eye, the tension of keeping everything inside from this morning leaving him high-strung. “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he tried to laugh it off but he realized there was no humor in him, and it came out like a nervous cough.

Surprised and disappointed that Chris was obviously avoiding whatever had been bothering him – avoiding Phil’s questions and guarding the issue within himself – Phil pressed further past the boundary of professionalism between the two officers. “You’re snapping at the MTA staff, pissing off even the passengers.” They had bag check duty beforehand, a fold-out table set up with some fancy NYPD placards in the Rector Street station; Chris nearly took a commuter’s arm off when insisting to inspect their briefcase, seemed almost looking for a reason for disciplinary action or to tarnish his pristine record. “And when you’re not biting people’s heads off, you’re staring off into space; lights are on but someone’s gone off on vacation.

“Is something wrong? Did something happen with that girl you just met?”

“What makes you think it –“ Chris was about to answer back snappishly what made the older officer think it had been a girl he had met at the St. Patrick’s Day parade, a small part of him wanting it all to be over to he could shout and rage properly, take out the tension he was feeling that was only being metered out passive-aggressively against straphangers. Other parts of him wished it had been a girl, someone with fair skin and a kind smile he could take home to his mother so the blow he had received earlier that morning wouldn’t have stung so fiercely.

Phil cut him off, assuming Chris was simply getting defensive over the topic itself and not the implied gender surrounding the topic at hand. “You were like nothing I’d ever seen yesterday,” he admitted as the car screeched to a halt at Rockefeller Center. The two officers did a quick cursory check of the platform, just in the rare case that a gang fight or mugging would occur right in front of two uniformed officers in broad daylight, in the thirty-second time span the train was in the station. All clear, and the metal doors lumbered closed. “Happy. Happy like I was when I first met Kendra; I know that kind of feeling.”

Chris could remember meeting Phil’s wife once, at last year’s Labor Day barbecue at the Stacey’s cookie-cutter split-level home in Staten Island. Kendra’s eyes were bright and sunnier than the early September sun, one daughter resting in her arms at all times and the other weaving through legs of guests, shyly sneaking glances at her father’s handsome new partner. The entire day, throughout the hot dogs, a dire charcoal situation and the myriad of guests complaining about coming all the way out to Staten Island, Chris had never seen that light leave Kendra’s eyes. It even seemed to brighten to radioactive levels when she was looking over at her husband, dutifully manning the grill. They never talked much about their respective personal lives but when he did, Phil spoke of his wife and daughters, how he couldn’t imagine his world without them.

Chris had wanted that kind of feeling, the all-encompassing love, ever since he could remember. He hadn’t even realized he had wanted that with Blake until that moment, when Phil told him of what he had seen in Chris’s smile and the fleeting thought of what could have been ran through his mind.

“And now that’s all gone,” Phil continued, waving his hand at Chris. “And it’s like bizarro!Chris came to work today in his place.” He asked again, the sympathetic tone in his voice causing Chris to finally lift his head and meet steely blue eyes. “Did something happen, Chris?”

That considerate, naïve tone, that friendly look in Phil’s eyes…how would that expression change if Chris told him the truth, revealed to him that he was so right about the cause but that he had the details all muddled. He wanted to tell him everything and nothing, wanted to get it all out because holding it in for all these years was killing him but knew that doing so could be even worse. “It’s all fucked up, Phil.” It took a few moments for him to respond but Phil gave him the time, seeing the gears work in his mind though not knowing the thoughts behind the conflicted expression on his partner’s face. “I thought it was something…I thought I was something. But I’m not. I’m not ready.”

“Ready for what?”

The train bucked as it slowed down underground, the car windows marred with scratchiti still showing the pitch-black walls of the labyrinth-like tunnels crisscrossing the city. They weren’t slowing down inside a station; the train’s conductor came onto the intercom once the cars fully stopped, the muffled voice explaining only train traffic and nothing more. Chris was stranded in the train, with a handful of passengers and his partner and the question hanging in the air.

“You’re scared,” Phil said after a stretch of silence, startling green eyes now meeting across the car’s aisle with a friendly’ sympathetic blue.

His face turned cold, thinking back to the words in that e-mail, the way Blake’s touch once warmed the skin but now burned like an open flame. “I have good reason to be.” The article Blake had written on the parade, the one he swore didn’t name names but his word was less than golden at this point; who knew if that second article would see the light of day, show Chris for what he really was without his consent. He wasn’t ready to face the questions, the accusations, especially alone, now that the one man he thought he might take that step for was the one throwing him into the fire.

Phil smiled – that smile Chris got to know well when children would come up to them on duty, wide-eyes innocence and reverence nearly pouring out from their fingertips, and asked questions about their uniform, squad car sirens, and how wonderful it was to be a cop. “I was scared, too,” he admitted. “I was young, right out of high school and this knockout of a woman was here, giving me the time of day – more than the time of day –“ Phil raised an eyebrow suggestively and Chris had a chuckle at that, white-bread Ward Cleaver, Phil Stacey attempting to talk about sex.

"You fought?" Chris asked, raising an eyebrow. Phil had to keep himself from laughing.

"We still fight," he replied, remembering the previous Sunday when a conversation about catching lunch with Kendra's mother on her birthday devolved into a less-than friendly pillowfight. "If you don't have arguments then you're just not talking to each other. When I first met Kendra, I knew, I could just tell she would be special to me. But I was scared of getting close, of finally realizing she was the one. So I picked things apart: the relationship, stupid things like how she folds her socks." Phil gave a knowing smirk. "She still folds them wrong, by the way. We'd fight, and then we'd make up again, we'd learn more about each other and what it takes to make our marriage work."

Chris shook his head; Phil's explanation just sounded too easy to him. There were factors Phil didn't know, flaws in that reasoning that made things more complicated for Chris than for anyone. "It's not that simple," he insisted, ducking his head to hide the vulnerability in his eyes.

"It is that simple. I don't know what's got you all riled up, but it's probably not worth backing out of everything. You can have that happiness I saw in you yesterday, but it doesn't come easily." Chris squared his jaw, not daring to look Phil in the eye because he knew every word the older man spoke was true. "You both have to work at it and reconcile things to make a relationship last."

"Yeah, but what if he doesn't want to work at it?"

He had said it before he even realized the issue, before his mind could run the thought through a filter, pasteurize it and send out the Fox Family Channel version altered from the original. He had been frustrated, strung-out, his mind warring with his heart over Blake and the both of them working against Phil's logic. The words had come abruptly and he hadn't meant to blurt it out like that, but now that it was out in the air between them, the younger man's gut told him not to regret it.

Phil hesitated but for only a moment, the startled look in his blue eyes going away, his observation that Chris hadn't misspoken the one pronoun, that perhaps all he had said to him about girlfriends and late-night rendezvous were mistakes in grammar. He looked over at his partner, who was completely shrunk into himself with eyes looking everywhere but at Phil. Perhaps without even knowing he was doing it - not by his words or actions but by the uniform he proudly wore - Phil had given Chris the impression he had to keep those pronouns to himself.

"If...he feels even a fraction of the way you looked like you felt yesterday," Phil chose his words carefully, making sure that even though Chris's mind was preoccupied with the fear mirrored in his eyes, he heard what the older man had to say. "Trust me, he'll want to resolve this just as much as you."

It felt strange to hear those words from Phil, to listen to him talk about Blake, Chris's affection for Blake, without any veiled generalities or messy pronouns put in place. That, and the sympathetic look in Phil's eyes, open and not judging, made something break inside Chris, let a wall crumble he thought he had fortified beyond even his own control. "He's said some things," Chris's voice was barely above a whisper, almost inaudible against the hum of the still subway car. Phil had to lean over, hand gripping the steel bar above the seats to make out the words. "He's _planning_ to say some more things...I don't know if I can handle it."

Phil didn't need to ask what supposedly dire things had been said to bring Chris to this state; the details now, as they would be a lifetime from now, were irrelevant. "You'll never know if you don't talk it out." He gave a warm smile. "Kendra can get pretty damn defensive about her socks, I'll tell you that."

A smile cracked on Chris's lips, a fissure in the stone-faced facade he had on all morning. It was a brief flash of the man Phil knew well, the man Chris was feeling closer to being once more. Phil watched him with a friendly grin, felt the rev of the train engine's kick start underneath their feet, the car slowly readying itself again for movement. "You could've told me, you know," he said after a few moments, quieter than before.

"That," Chris's eyes widened, trying to imagine mentioning it in passing to Phil while on duty or casually commenting on the attractive man passing by on the subway while his partner pointed out the women; failing. "Wasn't something I was planning on saying today." Despite that, despite the surprise of the words coming out of his own mouth, Chris felt lighter saying it to Phil, the older man's kind eyes assuring him that it wouldn't go beyond that subway car, wouldn't be leaked out like a rumor or a plague, or an exposé. "Now you know why I said it wouldn't be easy."

The train lurched into motion once more, picking up speed to make up for the time lost in the delay without so much as an explanation or apology from the conductor. "If love were always easy," Phil said with a grin, his ease with the conversation and the startling news allowing the tension to lift a bit from Chris's shoulders, stopped him from bolting the moment they next pulled into a station. "Then everyone would be in love, there would be peace and happiness all over the world, no one would feel the need to commit crimes and we'd both be out of a job."

Chris reared his head back, couldn't stop himself from laughing, his mood lightening instantly. It lifted that veil of uncertain thoughts clouding his mind since that morning, working not as water to deepen the wound but like a salve to heal it. The smile on Phil's face, warm and accepting - one of a partner and a friend - and the sound of his own laughter in his ears effectively cleared out the muddle of uncertainty and fear over what Chris had read in that e-mail and what Blake had told him. He promised that the second article, the one that would push Chris out into the public eye of scrutiny and ruining any relationship they might muster, was never going to be written, and Chris chose not to believe him. Perhaps, like Phil had said, he was looking for a reason to keep his distance; perhaps he feared giving away his heart more than revealing his secret.

The car screeched to a halt once more, this time within a station; the door opened to a rush of commuters ending their day. It was nearing the end of the officers' day as well; Phil pressed an arm against the doors to prevent them from closing allowing Chris to maneuver past the straphangers and onto the station platform, nearly deserted once everyone found space within the train car. The older officer waited until the train sped away, leaving silence in that station before continuing with honest eyes and a sympathetic hand, hoping that no matter who Chris had fallen for at the parade, he made the right decision to finally be happy.

"I don't know if I stepped too out of line today, asking about all this." Phil held his hands up in front of him, not allowing Chris to shake off the conversation, never speak about it and let it go to burrow deep within him. There were some things already leaked out of the box; there was no use in trying to cram it shut once more. "But if you want...we can leave all of it back on that train, go back to just talking the essentials. Work. Pizza. The Yankees - and don't even think about trying to sneak some Mets talk in there as well, you know on my grandfather's grave I won't talk about the Mets -" Phil pointed a finger at Chris, who chuckled and still couldn't understand every New Yorker's fierce loyalty to baseball. "And we'll go back to that place in our partnership. Whatever you're comfortable with."

Chris thought back on the amount of effort he extolled changing the gender in every conversation; how on Monday he had finally met someone he actually wanted to rave about, to gush, and not have to worry about stray pronouns or saying too much to give it away. He thought about the fear that unhinged him down at the parade before he had seen the fight break out and his officer instincts kicked in, and the way that weight disappeared now that his partner, someone he respected as a cop and trusted as a friend, finally knew. He harkened back to last night, when he kissed Blake on that street, how that one press of his lips felt more daring than staring down the barrel of a gun, more wonderful than catching a perp and bringing him to justice.

He looked up at Phil; the older man would comment months later that it was the first time he saw those green eyes shine all day, and something sparkling in them like he had never seen. "No, I...I don't want to forget this happened," he replied with a genuine smile as they exited the station. He spent a lifetime fooling himself and those around him; this week, Blake had given him a chance to have a relationship he wouldn't want to regret. "I want to remember every second."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those that don't already know, David Cook DOES [offer lemon poppy seed muffins](http://i108.photobucket.com/albums/n40/jen-jt/CookieWithMuffinsCopy-1.jpg) when you're feeling low. XDDDD
> 
> Since 9/11 the NYPD has started doing random bag searches in train stations, making people take out their backpacks or suitcases, sometimes having police dogs on the scene as well. [This](http://www.prisonplanet.com/images/october2005/101005bags.jpg) is a little bit what it looks like. I've never been stopped, nor have I seen anyone been stopped for a search lol, so I can't say how effective the measures may be.
> 
> The Staceys live on Staten Island, which is the fifth (and sometimes forgotten) borough that makes up New York City. It's the most suburban out of the five - there are actually live wild turkeys still around some areas - and the hardest to get to: you can either take a ferry from Manhattan (and get the best and cheapest scenic view of the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty while you're at it) or pay a ker _ay_ zay amount of money to drive over the Verrazzano Bridge from Brooklyn. I have friends that live on Staten Island and everyone always complains when we have to visit them, lol.
> 
> Back in the 1980s, spray paint graffiti was the method of choice for vandalizing subway cars; now, with stricter regulations on the sale of spray paint, "scratchiti" is the newest craze. [Scratchiti](http://www.engineering.columbia.edu/news/archive/spring01/images/scratchiti.jpg) is usually on the windows of subway cars and is actually more damaging than grafiti, considering the MTA has to replace the entire window instead of just washing off paint. Another method of vandalism has recently been a bar of wet soap, where you run it along a surface and it remains once it's dried.


	13. He'll dance and he'll sing, and at night he'll return with his love back again

“Hey…Cookie, right?”

The man behind the bar smiled behind a veil of three-day old scruff, rolling his eyes to the ceiling littered with old posters and playbills. “Oh man, only Blake calls me ‘Cookie,’” he replied as the other man stepped into the café with a friendly smile. “The guy thinks he’s clever, I find I have to correct his self-perception every now and again. You’re Chris, right?”

Cook held out his hand to the other man; Chris’s eyes were welcoming yet wary, fully aware he was walking right into the lions’ den and not knowing just how much about Blake’s love life David Cook was aware of. He took the bartender’s hand and shook it genially, remembering the very different circumstances he had met Cook under only two days ago, when all that connected he and Blake were flirtatious glances and a skin-searing press of his thumb to Blake’s chest. From the happily ignorant smile on Cook’s face, Chris assumed the bartender knew nothing of the events that transpired past that night.

“You looking for Blake?” Cook asked; Chris nodded, the knot in his stomach that formed on the commute into Manhattan tightening at the sound of Blake’s name. He had taken some time after his shift to think on what Phil had said to him about relationships, that a perfect harmony between two people did not come right away, that it had to be cultivated and cared for through communication and understanding. Chris was ready to give that whole communication thing a second chance, take some time to talk to Blake about the articles and his own insecurities without emotions flying or egos jumping to conclusions. He only hoped Blake would still talk to him after that morning.

“He’s downstairs,” Cook pointed a thumb at the heavy metal door that led down to the music venue, the not-so-melodious sounds coming form the basement indicating a band going through soundcheck before their early evening performance. “Want me to go get him for you?”

Chris opened his mouth to accept the offer, his fingers nervously running over the denim of his pants in anticipation of seeing Blake again and convincing him he didn’t want to punch the officer in the jaw. Cook was two steps closer to the door before Chris could speak, but another voice stopped them both in still silence. “Don’t fucking touch that door, Cook,” said the voice faintly familiar to Chris’s ears, as if he held a conversation with its owner but never really paid attention to the words said. “This asshole cop doesn’t deserve to ever see Blake again.”

Turning to the source of the accusatory words, Chris saw a man with olive-toned skin and a scowl leaning up against the wooden panels along the near wall. His sly, intelligent dark eyes and lean, toned body underneath a dark shirt and jeans would have usually been things Chris would be remiss to forget…but after a few seconds he recognized the voice, the fierce loyalty behind that face, and realized the reason he could hardly remember the man’s appearance was because the morning he had met him Chris’s eyes saw only Blake.

“David,” Chris whispered, knowing before anything else this would be a hurdle to cross.

“Dude, this is Chris,” Cook attempted to explain to the other man, who had appeared to overhear the conversation and recognize the officer out of uniform as he was exiting the bathroom and returning to his friend downstairs. “ _Blake’s_ Chris. He’s cool -”

“No, he’s not ‘cool,’” David spat back; his arms were crossed against his chest but he looked ready to spring up and bar the door shut with his own body if he had to. “He damn near broke Shorty’s heart.”

Cook leaned in closer, as if the hushed whisper to David across the bar could not be heard by Chris, who was still standing only a few feet away. “But I thought he and Blake…”

“Could you give us some privacy for a moment?” Both Davids spun their heads to face Chris, finally speaking up and reminding them that the topic of their conversation was still in the room. He could see the stubbornness and anger in David’s eyes and knew that any of Cook’s arguments were never going to get Chris through that door to talk to Blake. “I think David and I need to talk about a few things first.”

Sensing a showdown he certainly didn’t want to get in the middle of, Cook held up his hands as a form of surrender, an indication he was content to let the two men go at it without his interference. He carefully stepped away from the bar and towards the record stalls in the back of the room under the pretense of checking the sales of the day with the new salesgirl, whom he thought to be rather dippy. He found her trying to interest a teenage boy with innocent eyes and an eager smile in a Phil Collins album – God only knew how that got into the collection or how she smuggled it past the owners or even Blake – and he shook his head glumly, snatching the album out of the boy’s hands and replacing it with ZZTop.

“You’ve got a lot of damn nerve coming here.” David pushed himself off of the wall and took a seat at the bar, his dark eyes never leaving Chris’s. There was resentment in those eyes that ran deeper than simply a friend’s betrayal: in David’s eyes Chris was every closeted man who used him and ran, who decided they couldn’t live up to what was in their hearts after they broke his. Chris knew he’d find no friend in those eyes.

But there was one thing different about those men and Chris: he was there to make things right between him and Blake.

“I’m here, aren’t I?” he challenged. He knew to keep his cool here, not to let the jabs and the insults David was sure to throw in his direction faze or deter him from his goal. “Why don’t you let Blake decide whether he wants to see me or not? He’s a grown man, he can make his own decisions.”

David set his jaw; wrong thing to say. “ _Blake,_ ” he said with a sneer, “Is a wreck because of you. Downstairs, he’s halfway to breaking down and halfway to kicking a hole straight through an amp. And you’re the reason for all of it.”

Chris took a step back, the realization hitting him: he hadn’t meant to hurt Blake, though in his anger that morning he cared little about the activist’s feelings over his own. But the thought of Blake breaking over this, of mulling it over in his mind until it started to control him, was something Chris didn’t want to face. “This isn’t about you,” he said warily, thinking fleetingly that David himself was looking for an apology. “It’s between me and Blake. I want to make this better somehow, to talk –“

“He’s my friend…that’s enough reason for me to be involved. You fucked him,” the words cut deeper than any knife, bore farther than a gunshot to the chest. “Then you left him in the middle of the night. And when he cared to find you and explain, you called him a liar and a muckraker, and you kicked him out of your house.” David narrowed his eyes, clenched his hands into fists against the bar. “Did I get all those details right?”

The officer wanted to argue that this was his fight with Blake, that despite being a loyal and trusted friend – which, Chris admitted to himself, was something Blake would definitely need if the officer had never planned on coming back – David had nothing to do with the situation. But that stance was going to get Chris nowhere and he knew it: in negotiation lessons at the Academy they taught Chris never to get into a conversation he could lose. “I’m sorry I hurt Blake…really I am,” He said after a few seconds, the sincerity in his voice evident even to David. “I jumped to conclusions this morning and said some things I want to take back. But I wasn’t the only one with hurtful words. I want to work this out with him; at least give me a chance to try.”

“Poor baby.” The stinging words were still there but the hatred behind them had subsided slightly; a snakebite without the poison was, against thick skin, just an irritation. Chris presumed that David had many relationship-breaking arguments with men like Chris, but that the other man hadn’t seen those situations through the eyes of any one of them.

“This isn’t easy for me.”

“Of course not,” David spat back. “The poor, closeted cop, can’t say a word about his secret to anyone; fucks around with little gay men’s emotions just because he can. And when he’s got to make a choice between his public life and his private, dirty little world, he’ll drop it like a stone in the East River –“

“I won’t.” Chris’s voice was more forceful than usual but David pushed him to it. The other man was making assumptions about Chris and his sexuality, and how he wanted to treat Blake. Chris had learned this morning that believing something horrible and unfounded in a person never ended well. A vein pulsed in his neck, his hands clenched at his sides, a determined fire in green eyes. “I like Blake…a lot.” He closed his eyes, images of the activist smiling at him, taking his hand in his, thrilling jolts of electricity as he pressed lips to Chris’s. “And I think…I hope…that this could be something lasting. Something real.” The words floated off his tongue, Blake’s words, nearly tattooed onto the skin he whispered them into.

“And I know I’m not the most open to others about who I am –“ David snorted at the understatement, and even Chris realized that wasn’t painting the whole picture. “My friends don’t know, my family…hell, I just confirmed it to my roommate yesterday, told my partner this afternoon. It was just something I was never encouraged to bring attention to, to publicize and I never found a reason to really think otherwise.” Chris closed his eyes and a familiar golden brown filled his memory, playful eyes that made Chris never want to look away. “But then I met Blake, and my whole attitude started to change. I want people to know that I’ve met someone…who I can’t stop thinking about, good or bad. I want the world to know that I’m just not the same person I was before I met Blake.

“I just…” words started to fail him, finding himself unable to describe the lightness in his chest when Blake smiled at him, how Chris could grin until his face hurt just at the way Blake touched his inked skin, tracing the arrows on his arm with a quiet veneration. He opened his eyes to see an entirely different expression from the openly hostile glower David had been giving him the entire time in the Cake Shop, something definitely milder and, dare he think it, understanding. “I want to be with him, David. And…I want everyone to know it.”

“I don’t believe you,” David said blankly, more of an instinctual comment than something from the heart; the known skeptic was becoming skeptical of himself.

Chris sighed; he could just strong-arm his way past the door to see Blake, knowing that David couldn’t get the better of him physically, and his instinct was that he didn’t need to explain himself to David to begin with. But this wasn’t about what David Hernandez wanted and Chris needing to prove something to him; Chris needed to prove his conviction to himself.

“Hey, Cook!” he shouted to the back of the shop; three heads shot up, the round-cheeked teenager pawing through his wallet for change of a $20, the salesgirl whose blonde ringlets bounced with the movement, and Cook himself with a perplexed expression on his face. Chris felt one last pull of fear, a remnant of emotions he realized would always be there, but he would no longer allow it to control his life. “I’m gay. And I don’t admit it much – I hide behind my badge, maybe I thought my life would be easier that way but it’s just made things more complicated than I ever imagined. But I’m ready to do this – I want to stop hiding from everyone, including myself. And I hope that Blake will want to be there to support me in this.”

The three stared back at Chris in stunned silence at the sudden and direct admission. The small teen’s eyes bulged, nervous laughter bubbling out of an open mouth. “Gosh!” he whispered before slapping a hand over his mouth. Cook raised one eyebrow at the officer, confused not by the content of his confession but its nature; he shrugged, at a loss for anything else to do, being more accustomed to befriending gay men long after they had come out. “Oohkay,” he said, voice unaffected and deadpan. The blonde smiled wide with premature crows’ feet cracked along her eyelids; she clasped her hands together and gave a muted cheer.

Turning back to David, Chris quirked an eyebrow, quickly noticing the shocked look on the other man’s face at the open, unrelenting way Chris had admitted things to Cook. The officer waited for a response, but the lightness in his heart, his very body, was enough answer for himself, a slowly building feeling like a glow in his veins at saying those words aloud and knowing that nothing bad would come of telling the truth.

David found it hard to respond: the officer had, in the past thirty seconds, changed David’s mind about his intentions and the core of his being, and it was making it hard to continue hating him. Never once had he seen a man so content in the closet want to burst out, be so ready to step out into the light of self-awareness after so many years of keeping himself and everyone around him in the dark…just for that David had no choice but to respect him. But he was doing all of this just for the chance to talk to Blake, to save that relationship on the verge, pull it back from the cliff’s edge and finally be with him…there wasn’t any more snark left in David to counter that.

“Cook doesn’t count,” he mustered, the last-ditch effort to discredit the officer. Chris smiled, knowing how futile this was on David’s behalf. “He’s friends with so many gay men, I’m starting to doubt that whole long-term girlfriend back in Tulsa story he’s been pushing.”

“Hey, I heard that!” Cook shouted to the front of the bar, mock-offended.

Chris smiled brighter, seeing David flustered at trying to find holes in the officer’s stance and coming up with nothing. And he wouldn’t be able to find those flaws: Chris understood, for the first time in longer than he can remember, what he really wanted for himself – for both he and Blake – and he was willing to finally take the plunge for it. “Cook counts,” he insisted softly, watching as David’s face dropped the determination and shone a level of new, enlightening respect for the officer.

Nodding begrudgingly, David had no choice but to resign to Chris: it was evident to him now, the admission of his wants and desires to near strangers and the spark in his green eyes showing that he was more ready now to face himself and his fears about how the world would perceive him for what he wanted. He shrugged his shoulders, rising from the bar to speak with Chris on an even keel. “I just don’t want Blake to get hurt,” he confessed; he had his own misgivings about Chris the moment Blake hesitated on speaking about how open he might be, but the anger and resentment was all for the care of his friend, to feel the emotions Blake wasn’t allowing himself to feel. He didn’t want to let Chris cut deeper, hurt Blake beyond David’s repair.

A hand shot out in David’s direction, open-palmed, extended genially; Chris offering a friendly handshake, eyes a clearer green than he had ever witnessed. “I don’t want that, either,” he said evenly, promising in so many words not to misplace any trust David might give him, not to damage the connection and the heart he wanted to reclaim. David didn’t have to look down at the hand outstretched before him, he could see all the sincerity in Chris’s eyes and the conviction to follow through on that as best he could. Not breaking their stare, David reached out his own arm and shook the officer’s hand, the final gesture of their truce, antagonism buried for the sake of something bigger, more.

“So you want to…” David pointed back behind him towards the door at the bar, the one leading to the basement and a frustrated and conflicted Blake. Chris had argued his point to see Blake, pushed to prove his drive to make a relationship with the activist work despite all that happened that morning. But now that the path was left open to him, Chris thought back on the actions he took to get him there, and reconsidered.

“I’ve…got something to do first.” David raised an eyebrow in surprise: after all that arguing, now Chris wasn’t even going to talk with Blake? A flicker of irritation flared in his gut but then soon subsided; the honest, bold expression in Chris’s face told him not to fret. “But tell Blake…tell him I’m ready to make this into something real.” The whispered words whirled in his mind, working like memory cells to remind him of the spark of Blake’s touch on his skin, Blake’s sighs against his kiss. “And if he feels the same way, to meet me at midnight…at the place where we first met.”

It was dramatic, he knew, but he needed some time to himself to ruminate on this decision – and to do something he truly needed before he could see Blake again. Chris wanted them both to return to St. Patrick’s Cathedral, back to that fateful stop along the parade route where the officer first caught sight and sound of the activist, seeing one another in their respective elements. Chris wanted to say to Blake all of the things he couldn’t at the parade, the words his uniform and his fear prevented from coming out.

David nodded solemnly, the serious expression on his face silently assuring Chris he would relay the message to the letter. He hadn’t been overly fond of the officer up until a few moments ago, and the newfound respect for him would dissolve the moment he stepped out of line with Blake or hurt him in any way. But he could tell by the look in Chris’s eyes that he meant what he said; David only wanted to see his good friend happy, and if Chris was the man that would do that, there was no reason to impede that any longer.

“What do you have to do, though?” he asked, wondering what else could possibly be on the officer’s mind besides this.

“Just…have to talk to someone first.” With a nod to David and a quick wave to the back of the store to Cook, Chris left the Cake Shop, not accomplishing the one objective he had planned on when entering but instead doing so much more. He took his cell phone out of his pocket, quickly stealing a glance at the time before calling the seventh number on his speed dial. 8 o’clock; he still had four hours until meeting Blake, but he wasn’t sure even that would be enough time for what he had to do.

The phone rang four times before someone picked up on the other end; if it had gone to voicemail Chris would have froze, his mind a complete blank on handling that particular contingency. “Jackson!” he heard the familiar voice shout away from the receiver, the quick mental image of his bright-eyed nephew coming into his vision, rosy-cheeked and excited to the point of frenzy over presents on Christmas morning. “Don’t feed Tommy your hamburger, he’s too fat already without you helping him!”

“Fattening up my puppy, sis?” Chris chuckled, ducking down empty sidestreets to avoid the noisy traffic of the city. Now Tommy popped into his mind, the bulldog he had since it was a newborn, blind and bald and helpless if not for Chris. It had broken his heart to discover the great metropolis of parks was not as pet-friendly as its many dog parks had the officer believe, and he couldn’t find an apartment under his budget constraints that would also allow Tommy.

If Jackson was plying the bulldog with treats, then it meant his sister’s family was visiting his parent’s house; a pang of nostalgia and homesickness, the kind that slammed into him with the whiff of blackberry pie or the sound of a familiar Southern accent, coursed through his body, but he wouldn’t let it deter him from his main goal.

Michelle’s hearty laugh drifted over the airwaves, reminding Chris of decades-old sibling rivalries, graduations, birthdays. “I swear, we’re spoiling him no more than Mom already does.” Chris mused that, even with the ample number of grandchildren his sister had provided Danny and Phyllis Richardson, his parents still managed to treat Tommy like one as well. “What’s up? Everything okay? You want to talk to mom?”

“No!” Chris quickly protested before Michelle could pass the phone over; he wasn’t quite ready for this conversation with his _mother_. “I…actually had something to talk to you about,” he said, his demeanor calming a bit. “Can you go somewhere alone? It’s kind of important.”

From the tone in her brother’s voice Michelle could tell he was serious about this; her voice dropped, making sure not to be heard. “Oh God Chris, you didn’t knock some girl up, did you?”

If Chris had been in any other mindframe he would have laughed, seen the irony of the statement and moved on; not tonight. “I promise you, Meesh,” he replied. “It’s nothing even close to that at all.”


	14. What if the neighbours are talking? Who cares if your friends stop and stare?

The time it had taken from the end of Blake’s shift – the band, fronted by an overpowering rocker whose shaggy, blond locks Blake debated the entire set was a wig, thankfully ended early – to get to Brandon’s house didn’t feel nearly as long as the wait to actually get inside. He knew Brandon and Ace would be home – the couple had a robust social life but typically only on the weekends – and he needed to talk with Brandon, to clear up the cobwebs in his mind, especially after what David had told him at the end of his shift.

He’d waited for Brandon to grant him entrance into the apartment building before but never had it felt so unbearably long, not when Blake was desperate for discussion, for advice from the man he considered to know everything about how to do a relationship right. David had confronted Blake before the band’s opening set, supposedly only minutes after Chris Richardson had been upstairs in the Cake Shop in an attempt to mend what had been broken that morning. Whatever he had said – David was a bit fuzzy on details but Blake always knew he could rely on Cook’s photographic memory if he had to – it had turned David’s perception and distrust of Chris completely around.

> _“You need to give him another chance,” David had told him in rare, serious form, especially when it came to relationships only two days old. “He wants to work this out with you, make a commitment to himself; and I believe him. And I know you wouldn’t be stewing over this if he didn’t mean something to you. You need to see him tonight,” he reached over the bar to cover Blake’s wrist with his hand, reassuring fingers passing over roots and branches, and the flowing blood beneath it. “Or you’ll regret it.”_

But something still didn’t click with the angry, betrayed look in Chris’s eyes Blake had seen that morning and the way David said he acted. Chris certainly didn’t seem ready to come to terms with his sexuality when he effectively kicked Blake out of his apartment after the activist tracked him down. Blake wanted something lasting, something more with Chris but he wasn’t willing to go back on his own convictions and get involved with a closeted man, or allow his emotions to get shattered any more than they already were. How could he be sure Chris was being genuine to David at the Cake Shop? What if the officer thought he was he was ready, but backed out the moment the familiar sense of fear kicked up in his gut?

There was too much going on in his mind to brush away the emotions and leave only the facts, the hard evidence, to come to a logical conclusion. That’s why Blake needed to talk to Brandon.

When he was finally buzzed into the building after what seemed like hours of waiting, Blake bounded up the stairs two at a time, his legs immediately feeling the burn when he usually waited leisurely to take the elevator to the 5th floor apartment. It was already late into the night, closer to midnight than Blake had first imagined, and he didn’t have the time or the patience to wait. His mind briefly set upon the ache in his thighs, and how Chris’s muscular legs could conquer those steps with ease, his blood pumping to strained muscles, barely visible but Blake would know they were there, he had felt them before.

Brandon opened the door to a panting Blake, a bemused expression on his face. Blake thought he was at first displeased with the activist’s appearance, his sudden interest in physical exercise in his building’s stairwell…but then he took another look at his friend before him. Brandon’s button-down shirt was untucked and open, his khakis hastily zipped, chest rising and falling at an elevated rate like Blake’s. Perhaps this was a particularly bad time to call on Brandon and Ace in their apartment.

“This better be important,” Brandon said gravely. Blake pushed past the doorway and caught a glimpse of Ace through a cracked-open bedroom door, cursing as he slipped on a pair of boxers.

***

“So he found the e-mail and left.” Brandon had successfully calmed down Blake’s nerves once he got the activist into the living room; Blake told him the events of the day piece by piece, Brandon nodding solemnly with an introspective stare. The mood of the apartment was certainly different from the day before, when Blake’s excitement over his dinner date with Chris filled up the room, mere walls unable to contain his anticipating smile.

“But then he kicked me out of his place once I tried to explain.” Blake ran a hand through his hair, free of product or style, having rushed out of the apartment after Chris without primping. “Now, I hear he comes into the Cake Shop to reconcile, completely throws David for a loop, and doesn’t even come down to talk to me.” He looked at Brandon, who was seated on the cream colored sofa in thought. “Please tell me you can see some clarity in this clusterfuck, Brandon.”

“What I can see,” said Brandon, “is that you’re running a tread in the carpet.” Blake looked down at the floor below him, saw the impressions his feet were making into the plush carpet as he paced in frustration. It was always easy to see when Blake was less than content by the rate of movement of his feet. “But he wants to make this work. Does he know how you feel about dating guys in the closet?”

Blake nodded, remembering his own words the first night they had been together, diving head-first into shamrock green eyes as they kissed. “You should’ve seen the look on his face this morning,” he said. “Like the earth would crumble around him if his cop friends ever found out he fucks men.” It had angered Blake to see someone so fearful of the world around him and of who Chris really was, but more than that was the soft-hitting sadness that, together or not, Chris might have been ashamed of Blake. That activist wasn’t nearly masochistic enough to allow himself to feel that way just to be with Chris.

Brandon shrugged, making sure not to pass judgment. “It happens,” he said, his answers infuriatingly neutral to Blake. “But David said that Chris was willing to change? What, are they BFFs now?”

“Apparently,” snorted Blake. The most puzzling thing about the whole evening, to both Blake experiencing it and Brandon hearing it retold, is the complete turnaround of David’s opinion on Chris Richardson. Blake might have been stubborn in his convictions but David was quick-drying cement, choosing sides and ideologies instantly and never faltering from his stance. “He went from plotting where to hide the body to insisting that I talk with Chris again. I don’t know what he must have said to change D’s mind, but –“

“But he must have really meant it,” Brandon cut him off with a knowing smile.

Clenching his jaw in frustration, Blake started to pace again; if Brandon wasn’t going to give the sage, meaningful advice on relationships that Blake regularly depended on from him, then to hell with the carpet. “What if this is just some scheme to get me to see him again, and then he blows me off even worse than before? How can I just forget what he had said about my career, about me?” Blake always put trust in his old friend’s advice and judgment when it came to emotions and especially relationships; Brandon was the only person he knew, save for his own parents, that was in a long-term relationship where each day he loved his partner as if it was the first. He didn’t know what to do about Chris, how to handle the conflicting feelings about the officer in his mind, but he hoped Brandon would help shed some light on his course of action.

“Blake…fuck that. It wasn’t that bad of a fight, get over it and get him back.”

Blake was not expecting that nugget of wisdom.

“Brandon –“ he tried to protest, but the older man cut him off.

“You care about him, he cares about you. Isn’t that all you really need to know?” Brandon crossed his arms over his chest; all of the energy Blake was putting into worrying about this, to blow it out of proportion, wasn’t helping anyone. “You’re putting too much stock in standards and shit…just go with your feelings, Blake, and you’ll know what to do.”

But his feelings had been the problem in the first place: he had told Chris how he felt about wanting something serious, something real, and he sought that out only to have it run from him all the way back to Brooklyn. He didn’t want to pursue Chris if the officer hesitated about his sexuality yet again; he didn’t want to push himself out there if he was only going to be pushed off a cliff.

His gaze dropped to the floor, his feet slowing their pace on the carpet. “He said he’s ready for something real,” he recalled David’s relayed message; Chris’s words, mirroring Blake’s thoughts and desires. “But how can I really know that he means that?”

“You can’t.”

The voice came from behind Brandon and Blake looked up to see Ace standing in the doorway of the bedroom, contributing to the comments on Blake’s dilemma after overhearing through the door. He walked over to Brandon, placing a hand on his shoulder to catch his attention. Blake could catch the content shine in the other man’s eyes – a nice shade of green, nothing to sneeze at, but nowhere near the brilliant green he had come to know – when Brandon looked up, smiled at the love of his life. “Hon, can you…go make a pot of coffee?” Ace asked, fingertips lovingly brushing against the bristly hairs on the back on Brandon’s neck. His eyes told Brandon that the coffee wasn’t particularly necessary, but the time alone to talk to Blake was.

With a knowing nod and a brief yet tender kiss to his boyfriend’s lips, Brandon rose from the couch and went out into the kitchen, both pairs of eyes following him for very different reasons. Once the kitchen door closed behind him Ace tore his gaze away from the space, taking his time to sit in the spot vacated by Brandon on the couch. Blake and Ace were close enough that the activist didn’t feel uncomfortable with the other man knowing his situation – when one of your closest friends is living with someone else for nearly six years you end up talking to them eventually – but it was unusual for Ace to dispense relationship advice to Blake instead of Brandon. Ace’s stare on him, serious but not grave, stopped Blake’s pacing and fidgeting and made him take notice.

“I’m not about to give you advice, or tell you what you should do,” he said, folding his hands in front of him, leaning over slightly in his seat to better engage the activist in what he had to say. “Only you can decide that. But I can tell you…I know what he’s going through.”

Blake’s eyes widened, attentions perking up at the words. He didn’t expect this at all, never considered that Ace and Brandon’s story of finding one another would have any bearing on his connection with Chris. He knew the history between the two men, had watched it unfold as he himself developed a friendship with Brandon in his first few months in New York. There had been a change in Brandon’s demeanor, the gait of his step and the way that he breathed, after he had met Ace; Blake could see it almost to the day. But what he had never known was Ace’s side to the relationship, the flip side to their coin of respect and love Blake both revered and envied.

Ace began with a soft laugh at his own reminiscence of his teen years, those two years at Columbia before he met the love of his life. “I was a pretty confused kid a few years ago,” he said. “I was dating both guys and girls…but I’d only be taking the girls to meet Mom and Dad for Christmas, you know?” Blake thought about what Chris must have gone through the past few years in New York, wondering how he convinced his family he just hadn’t found the right girl yet while he was taking faceless, meaningless men to his bed. A quick and unexpected flow of jealousy shot up in Blake at the thought of other men in Chris’s bed besides him.

“So you’re bisexual,” Blake said plainly; the resulting grimace on Ace’s face confused him.

“I’m…all about loving a person, not a gender,” replied Ace, his heart swelling at the thought of the one person he was currently loving. Above all else, law school taught the young man that nothing was cut and dry, clearly defined as one or the other; a copyright infringement, someone’s guilt or innocence, was all about taking a stance and supporting it, making your argument the law, the truth. It was why the senior partners at Davis, Fuller & Lythgoe knew never to give Ace a case he didn’t believe in. “But I didn’t get that back then, didn’t really understand what my sexuality was trying to tell me, and I was too scared to search for that answer myself.

“And then I met Brandon.” Ace’s entire behavior changed then, his eyes slowly drifting closed, smile widening dreamily, happy little sigh escaping his lips without even realizing it. Blake was continually amazed that, despite all of the years Ace and Brandon had been together, they were as in love as they had ever been. “And…everything changed. The day I first met him –“ it had been one of the last performances of Shakespeare in the Park for the season, Brandon moving over from three rows back to sit with Ace, asking him about the imposed double standards of infidelity in Elizabethan England, and it was all over from there – “I looked into his eyes and I knew…I knew I’d want to spend the rest of my life with him.”

They had spent the entire performance of _Measure For Measure_ engrossed in both the play and each other – Blake had heard this tale many times before, the day right after it had happened from an excited, beaming Brandon, and subsequent retellings at every get-together afterwards. And when the play had ended and twilight began to dim everything but the pair into obscurity, the two men found they still had more to say, ducking into an all-night café and talking until the sun rose. They hadn’t even kissed, Brandon recalled, because they both knew somehow they would have all the time in the world to do so.

“All those insecurities, those fears I had…they didn’t mean anything to me once I met him. I wanted everyone and their dog to know how amazing he made me feel.” Ace smiled to himself, the next words whispered for only him to hear. “How amazing he still makes me feel.” Blake never understood how his friend could still be so in love after so many years of being with Ace; now, he could see how passionately the other man felt for him, how their lives had become intertwined. Blake understood that, wanted that with Chris. But were things too complicated to just have that joyous feeling? “It took finding Brandon to really see what was in my heart…what kind of love my heart was capable of. He’s done more for me than I could ever begin to explain.”

Blake could see where this was going like an eighteen-wheeler on an expressway: he imagined Chris as a teenager in Virginia, scared and confused about the feelings both emotional and physical he was having that everybody of authority told him was wrong. He saw him frozen for years this way, terrified to let something slip and watch his world fall apart. Blake thought of his own move to New York as a way to find his career, his own way in the world; Chris came here to become a paradox, allowing himself meaningless sexual encounters while hiding from the world and himself even more. Blake’s heart reached out at that moment, wanted to find Chris and hold him, tell him everything was alright because he shouldn’t have to hide anymore. He wanted to protect Chris from those who would reject him, like the officer had protected him in the brawl at the parade.

“You, Brandon, David…you knew what you wanted, what you felt in your heart, so early. I admire that.” Blake had come out to his parents at fifteen, after his first day at gym class freshman year when he realized how much he anticipated going back into the boys’ locker room more than anything else in his young little world. His mother doted, his father was startled but both took to it as a facet in the face of Blake’s personality, the thousands of small details that made up their son. Brandon had gotten the courage to tell his family at eighteen, and he received a less welcoming reaction. David had seemed aware of his sexuality since birth. “But not everyone feels that way at the same time, or feels sure, or even right to say that kind of thing aloud. Everyone has their own pace…Chris will find when the time is right for him.

“And sometimes…” Ace’s thoughts drifted off again, and if Blake wasn’t so engrossed in what the other man had to say he’d find it an irritating habit by now. “…you need to find a person a confirm that, to believe in yourself enough. Brandon is my reason…maybe you’re Chris’s.”

Tiny traces of a smile peeked in at Blake’s mouth; he couldn’t help it, the prospect of being an anchor and a support for Chris like Brandon and Ace’s relationship too tempting not to imagine. He saw Ace observing him, nearly reading what was coursing through his mind, smile brighter because Blake was finally considering what he wanted out of the relationship. How it could be much more than a physical one-night stand, or even some superficial half-assed romance.

“I want that,” he whispered, much like he had in the same apartment the day before. He saw so much more to Brandon and Ace’s relationship than just the love now: there was a partnership there, a fundamental need for one another and how they had changed each other’s lives for the better. He wanted Chris to be a part of his world – dear God, he thought about the officer enough for it – but maybe he had to realize that transition wouldn’t come at the snap of a finger, wouldn’t be as seamless as a quality, newly-made rainbow flag. He had to let Chris come to his own self-realization at his own pace…and be there for him every step of the way.

Ace rose from his seat, towering over Blake’s smaller frame, placing a comforting hand on the activist’s shoulder. Blake hadn’t said much in their talk – which was unusual, Ace certainly noticed that, usually the blond wouldn’t shut up – but what he did say he felt from the heart. For such a hard-skinned journalist, Blake seemed to wear his heart on his sleeve, his face always giving away his true desires. It was a fatal flaw for a journalist, an unseemly quirk for an activist that needs to keep his cool...but wholly admirable in a lover.

“Well, you’re not going to get that if you’re loitering around my living room,” Ace joked, and Blake laughed, perhaps for the first time that day. He thought about how Chris’s laugh began at just the crinkles close to his eyes, the exposed, neat little rows of teeth made Blake want to grin himself for no other reason than his smile would brighten Chris’s mood, a never-ending cycle of happiness. Blake wanted the chance to coax that laugh out of Chris again, so see him and have a slightly better go at it than they had in the morning in Brooklyn.

He looked down at his watch; he was in the trendiest part of TriBeCa, where the streets were too narrow and the residents in too high a tax bracket to warrant public bus routes, and he had to somehow get to Midtown, and nearly across the entire island of Manhattan, in 25 minutes. How ironic: were they in a less populated place, very few of the thousands of tourists and merrymakers who would still be celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in the streets two days after the face – someplace like Virginia, Blake supposed – he could drive to the cathedral and still have time to pick up a pack of Breath Savers.

With a quick wave and a smile to Ace – Brandon would surely forgive him for leaving without saying goodbye, especially since Blake had arrived at the apartment uninvited – the activist hauled out of the building attempting not to crash at the bottom of the stairs. Those fickle gods of New York City traffic be with him or not, he was getting to Chris by midnight if it killed him.

Once the door shut behind Blake, Ace gave out a sigh of relief, sinking his tall frame back down to the cushions of the sofa. Blake’s mind had already been halfway to made up, he knew he would have regretted it for months if he hadn’t given Chris another chance, perhaps even longer; Ace recognized he just needed a soft push in the right direction, make it clear to him the kind of man the officer was in his heart. He hoped it would turn out for the best, Blake deserved at least that; Ace had never met Chris Richardson, only knew of him from third-hand accounts through late night pillow talks with Brandon, but if he were only a tiny amount like Ace and how he had felt when he met Brandon…he had no doubt how the night would end for the both of them.

The kitchen door swung open, a knowing smile on Ace’s lips as Brandon emerged from the silence of the other room. “Where’s the coffee?” he asked with a smirk, already guessing his boyfriend’s departure wasn’t for a sudden yen for a cup of joe. Brandon looked over to him with tender yet desiring eyes, an expression Ace had gotten to know well over the years.

“I think he’s going to be fine,” the younger man said about Blake, their talk still imprinted into his memory as Brandon approached him at the couch. “They both will. They’ll just need to communicate, and compromise. I think –“

The sudden movement of his lover from standing above him at the sofa to seated atop him, straddling him, dark muscular legs up against his hips stopped Ace’s observations on the other man. Brandon still looked at him with those hungry eyes as his lips bore down on Ace’s, an unforgiving kiss that caused a shudder through Ace’s frame. Instinctively the younger man’s arms wrapped around Brandon, large palms traveling up and down covered flesh, cupping shoulderblades. Kissing Brandon wasn’t new, he doubted in the seven years they had been together there were ways to kiss and love each other they hadn’t discovered, but every kiss felt as incredible and exhilarating at their first.

Brandon broke the kiss, whispering against his lover’s skin, sighing as his body reacted to Ace’s arms around him, picking up where they had left off before Blake had interrupted them. “You are,” he rasped, the words Ace spoke so lovingly about Brandon to Blake running through his head. For once in his life Brandon thanked his particularly acute sense of hearing. “The most amazing man in the world. And –“ his voice cracked, he hadn’t meant it to but the emotions were bubbling over now; Ace brought a hand to Brandon’s cheek, green eyes mirroring the love and trust he had spoken of before. “- I’m the lucky one to have you in my life.”

As Blake exited the building making a beeline for Canal Street and praying to find a cabbie with little regard for traffic regulations or safety in exchange for speed, Brandon and Ace resumed their evening as planned smoothing over Blake’s visit as a small detour to a destination of their own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Brandon and Ace met at [Shakespeare In The Park](http://www.publictheater.org/content/view/126/219/), an annual performance of a selected Shakespeare play in Central Park that happens every summer at the Delacorte Theater. It's sponsored through the Public Theater, so all the performances are free (and yet I've STILL never gone!) Currently, the play Hamlet is being performed until June 29; in 2001, the summer when Brandon and Ace met (yes I DID do a lot of research on their relationship, shut up it WILL come in handy eventually ;]) they were performing [Measure For Measure](http://shakespeare.mit.edu/measure/full.html), an interesting comedy about the double standards of chastity and so-called virtue. It's not produced much since it's not a popular Shakespeare play, but it's a fairly interesting read.
> 
> The couple also live in an apartment in [TriBeCa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TriBeCa), named for its location as the "Triangle Below Canal." Most well-known for the TriBeCa Film Festival these days, the neighborhood is extremely trendy and expensive and densely-inhabited by young professionals like Ace and Brandon. :) A lot of the streets are small and cobble-stoned and aren't conducive at all to having big, lumbering public buses driving through. There are a number of subway lines running through the neighborhood but (trust me on this) they're a pain in the ass to use if you're looking to get to St. Patrick's Cathedral.
> 
> And yes, even though it's only 3 miles (a 15 minute drive) from one place to the other, getting there via public transportation in 25 minutes would be nothing short of a New York miracle.


	15. We're on the road to God knows where, but we're together now, who cares

Manhattan, or the whole of New York City if he wanted to think about it, never got dark. The neon glow of Times Square that could probably be seen by space, the entrancing, glittering bulbs of Coney Island illuminating the shore…even the streets were continuously awash in orange sodium streetlight, each road and avenue marked with dotted light like a midnight map, the glow of power reaching to every corner of every borough. He had flown in at night once, last year for his birthday when his parents bought the round trip flight, and he could remember looking down on the city like a film negative, each street remarkably outlined so that he could follow the path of the cars stalled in highway traffic and locate his own home.

Chris encountered the phenomenon the first night in New York once two years ago, when he rested his head on the air mattress in his then-new Bay Ridge apartment that would become too expensive for him if he didn’t find a roommate soon. His bedroom unfortunately faced the street, the brash orange flow streaming in like a floodlight directly into his eyes; he hadn’t even installed the curtain rod yet to try to block out the annoyance. He remembered living like an insomniac the first few nights, hoping he wouldn’t look so frazzled and sleepless on his first day at the Academy that they’d shoo him all the way back to Chesapeake.

In Virginia, the nights were exactly that: peer outside his childhood bedroom window and he’d see velvety black countryside stretching until the next house over – and even then it was one solitary porch light, teeming with mayflies and summer insects swarming to the light. All the roads leading away from his house required fog lights to penetrate the empty air, powerful, bright white lights against the perilous blackness of night.

 _Everything is black and white back there_ , Chris thought as he paced slowly on the steps of the cathedral. _But here…things are different._

Even St. Patrick’s Cathedral, hallowed old mainstay of the old world as it was, wasn’t immune to the immersion of light and activity at a time when the rest of the world slept. Its stately stone façade was lit from spotlights at the base and dancing along its buttresses, bringing even greater attention to the delicate handiwork and craftsmanship along the arches, the tall peaks of its twin belltowers. It was a spectacle rarely seen by native New Yorkers who long retreated back to their homes by that hour, meant more to attract tourists off of the Gray Line and away from the flashier adjacent Rockefeller Center. It was a pity the interior of the church was closed; Chris imagined the stained glass windows shone with an almost eerie ethereal quality under the glare of the spotlights from outside.

Chris pulled his jacket tighter to his body; it was cooler than he expected, the true nature of a New York March showing its face in what had been an unseasonably mild week. He hadn’t noticed the bite in the air when he had been on the phone, quickly ducking into an alcove in the closest public library to explain and inevitably calm his sister about the news. When he finally did get off the phone – after being stared down by a grim looking librarian in a tight bun until he left the silence of the library – the night had finally progressed into a brisk cold, the last, struggling frost of the winter before spring began the next morning.

It probably would have been better – more appropriate, more of a formal announcement than a phone call like a business transaction – had Chris told Michelle at some other time, sat her down to give her time for the concept to settle in. But the desire to get it out, to tell his trusted and beloved sister what he hadn’t been able to for years itched away underneath his skin, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to confront Blake without telling Michelle first. Striking shots of fear came through him throughout the call, but the sympathetic, soothing tone of his sister’s voice quieted that, pausing for only a second after he told her and then reminding him that coming out didn’t change his promise of a pony for his niece’s next birthday.

“Christopher Michael,” she had used that tone of voice she inherited from their mother, and he’d be lying if he said it wasn’t unsettling. “I’m shocked you thought this would change what I think of you. You’re my baby brother; you always will be.” He remembered fighting over getting shotgun to church every Sunday morning, how Michelle always had the grandiose dreams of moving out to take over the world, yet it was Chris who was the Richardson who first left Virginia. “Mom and Dad –“

“Don’t tell them yet,” Chris blurted out; he felt like he was six again, tearfully coming to wise Michelle first before explaining to his parents that he only wanted to give the goldfish a bath. “I…need time.”

He could almost feel Michelle’s smile over the telephone line. “I thought you’d say that.” Without nearly skipping a beat she asked, “Does this mean you’ll finally take me on the Sex & The City tour the next time I visit?”

“I’m gay, Meesh,” Chris joked – and by God, did he ever imagine he would ever be free to joke about this – “I’m not a woman.”

The conversation ran longer than he expected, both siblings touching on subjects once thought to be taboo and unspoken, not all necessarily related to Chris’s new admission. It was nearly midnight when they had said their goodbyes, and Chris found himself alone in front of the church, waiting for the man that helped him realize what he had inside, what he was truly made of.

His watch now read past midnight, and the nervous, poisonous idea that Blake may not be coming sunk into his mind.

Blake might not have been convinced at all of Chris’ sincerity over wanting to make this work; maybe he never felt as strongly as Chris had thought in the first place, and all of those fearful thoughts of a scathing, damning exposé were really rooted in truth. Maybe David had even decided not to relay the message on the devious thought of Chris waiting outside in the cold for a man that would never show. Maybe he was a fool to think Blake would want anything to do with him after the accusations he made that morning.

A mass of taxicabs and towncars slowly filed into the lanes along Fifth Avenue at the red light; he saw flashbulbs from a handful of night-owl tourists crossing the street from Rockefeller Center, foreigners on jet lag mixed with the not-quite sober clubgoers on their way to Third Avenue. Chris wondered how many more pictures these tourists would snap if he were in uniform, a perfect postcard of New York to print and send home to the envious grandkids. He wondered if any of them would care if they knew what the officer was waiting for.

The light changed, the cars shifted, and something else came into Chris’s vision: blond head turning this way and that frantically as his cab sped away; memorable, kissable lips breathing air in and out shallowly in his rush; chest heaving and hands clenched into anxious fists. He was worn out from a stressful and long day, frazzled by the trip uptown, and bitter the cabbie wouldn’t take a debit card.

Chris thought he had never seen such a beautiful sight.

Blake’s eyes finally caught upon the officer from across the street: he tried to hide his relief and excitement but failed, tried to cross over the avenue coolly and with swagger but nearly got hit by an M4 bus in the process. When he finally reached the foot of the wide steps to the cathedral, eyes bright at the sight of the man standing at their top, he wanted to shout, burst out laughing because they had both been so stubborn; this had been all they needed all along.

But even now, Blake held a strong front. He crossed his arms in front of his chest, the many thin layers of clothing on his frame no substitute for an overcoat and now he was feeling it. They stared at each other for a moment, not quite meeting each other in the eyes because if they did there would be no words to speak.

“You’re late,” Chris said, the tiniest flicker of a smile in the corner of his mouth cutting the bite to the words. “Thought you wouldn’t show.”

“What, Mr. Sweet Tea and Homemade Pie, does your perfection extend to punctuality as well?” Blake grinned cheesily at his own joke; it didn’t lightly pass Chris by that, in that quirky backwards way that was wholly Blake, the activist just called him perfect.

The smile faded, the joke losing its half-life, all of the anticipation between them to talk out their grievances, speak their minds stilling the air. Blake sighed, catching sight of the earnest shine in Chris’s eyes, illuminated by the church's spotlights; it was now or never. “I was never going to write the second article,” he stressed, nervous breath in this chest catching, holding.

Chris looked at him with wide eyes, swallowing the lump of doubt and fear, never letting it rise again. “I know,” he said solemnly. He watched as Blake folded in against a particularly chill gust of wind; bit his lip to stop from grinning over the fact that Blake _would_ be too stubborn of a man to request the rest of the conversation indoors. “You’re cold,” he observed.

“Nah, I’m _cool,_ there’s a difference –“

“Here.” Chris quickly slipped out of his windbreaker and wrapped it around the other man’s shoulders, lending that extra layer to Blake while simultaneously pulling them closer. The activist was within an arm’s reach now, close enough for Chris to reach out and wrap an arm around his waist, lift up the blond’s chin to place a kiss to those lips; he wouldn’t though, not yet, there was still too much unsettled between them.

Blake pulled his arms through the navy windbreaker, thinking with a hint of irony if the jacket was police-standard, his eyes locked onto the man before him, the muscles of his arms now fully discernible through his shirt. Distracting, Blake thought, but he could power through it. “Thank you.” He hadn’t meant to sound as choked up over a jacket, thought that he would never hear the end of it from Danny if he could see this.

“I jumped to conclusions,” Chris blurted out, soft worried crease in his brow. “Right away I thought of the worst. I was scared.” The guys he was close to on the force – Phil, of course, and probably Tabaldo but possibly not that flirty little meter maid that Chris kept graciously rejecting – they’d understand if he told them, when he told them, but he felt less than confident about the rest of the city. “I’m sorry. I should have trusted you.”

“I gave you no reason to,” Blake shrugged; Chris wasn’t the only one doling out the apologies. “I should have told you what I write earlier. That article didn’t include you –“ his first article, the one lambasting the police on their cruel indifference at the parade; Kristi thought it was punchier if Blake left out the part about the dashing off-duty cop being the only one to try to stop the brawl and Blake had agreed for other reasons. “But I should have told you what I was writing. I kept things from you because I didn’t know how far this would go.” He waved his hands between them, indicating the both of them. “I didn’t know how far we would go.”

His back straightened, flare of deep dignity rising up in him. Lasting relationships were about understanding and compromise but it didn’t mean abandoning or suppressing who he was. “I’m not going to stop writing what I write,” he insisted, to which Chris automatically replied “I wouldn’t ask you to,” his eyes wide, never even entertaining the thought. “I’m good at what I do, and I love doing it.”

Chris nodded; they might have been on two conflicting professional paths but their convictions of integrity were one and the same. “Me, too.”

Chuckling, Blake beamed with relief, dropping his head down because he couldn’t believe he looked into those uniquely green eyes with scorn and resentment that morning. “God, we’re idiots, aren’t we,” he laughed; Chris joined in, soft, undeniably Southern chortle, his head shaking, imagining what fools they could have been. “So you’re really ready for this?” he asked, serious tone seeping in, a rarity for Blake.

“Do you mean coming out of the closet, or getting into a relationship?”

It surprised Blake, pleasantly, to hear both concepts float so effortlessly off Chris’s tongue. “I mean, you weren’t about to show me off at the Policeman’s Banquet or anything this morning,” he said, biting his lip in spite of himself. He wanted this, he wanted Chris so badly, but he had to know the other man was genuine. “Do you really –“

“I told my sister,” Chris interrupted, the memory of his conversation with Michelle emboldening him, he wanted to tell Blake everything, the skeletons in his closet revealed only to be shadows. “I called her before you came.”

“Wow…how’d it go?”

This time Chris couldn’t help but grin, blush; remember how painless it had been, freeing actually. “She told me I’m her brother, no matter what.” He couldn’t decide whether to beam or tear up at the unyielding support she gave him, so his body decided to do both. “And that she loves me, and supports whatever I have to do.”

Blake got oddly curious to know if Chris mentioned him to his sister, if he shyly asked for advice or merely gushed, but actually asking that to Chris might be a bit too pressing at this delicate juncture if not massively egocentric. “You know, Cook,” he coughed, affecting a mock macho tone; if this was his impression of a straight man, Chris mused, then Blake obviously hadn’t been around many for long. “He supports you, too. But in a more –“ he jutted out his jaw, pounded a fist against his chest twice and then held it up in mock military style. “- kind of way.”

“Good to know,” Chris made out before snorting out a laugh at Blake’s awful attempt at impersonation, trying to hold it in for modesty but failing. His eyes squinted and closed as relieved giggled overtook both men, the happiness of one feeding off of the other. God, it felt good to laugh with him, Chris thought, especially over things like this, when everything was said openly to one another, nothing held back. Chris didn’t think he had ever known someone before Blake with whom he could disclose everything, feel free to laugh without hiding a part of himself.

“It won’t be easy,” said Blake after their giddiness died down; he would have been a poster child for a seamless transition, for finding oneself and telling the world, but even he had seen some bumps in the road, particularly when distant relatives – determined to believe Blake was just a perpetual bachelor – tried to set him up on dates with women. Those explanations never went smoothly. “And it won’t be something you get used to overnight.”

“I know.” The process ahead of him was daunting; it would take a world more self-assurance and reflection than any task he accomplished in the Academy or on duty – but the benefits before him were well outweighing the difficulties. “But…you don’t know how amazing it’s felt to be…just to be.” If there was one thing Blake had shown him since they had met – besides how a grown man could go 26 years without ever learning the correct way to cook pasta – it was how one man didn’t have to bend to the will of the world…that, the activist showed him without words, how one man can begin to change the shape of his world.

Blake didn’t quite know what to say; it was just what he and Ace talked about that night, the longing for that connection…he looked into Chris’s eyes, full of eagerness and delight, and knew that he had found it. “I support you too.” He laughed at himself, feeling overly cheesy like he was the one in a romantic comedy with the big, teary climatic scene at the foot of the steps, the camera panning out to some awful Lite FM cover of a song that never deserved to be covered in the first place. Boy, Officer Richardson sure knew how to pick his dramatic meeting places.

But later, when they began to tell their story to vague acquaintances at cocktail parties, Chris would admit that it was the most sincere thing he had heard from Blake all night. That the officer felt deep in his bones that Blake wanted Chris to come to terms with himself for Chris’s sake, and that he would stick by him through it all if he wanted him to. “I mean,” he continued, tiny, unbelievably uncharacteristic blush on his cheeks because Chris was smiling so sweetly at him and wouldn’t stop. “I want to be here for you. Whatever you need.” Blake hoped Chris wasn’t looking for a mentor of a life coach in him, that was for damn sure.

Chris smiled, grinned; all he had wanted to hear from Blake was that. A shiver passed through his body at the thought: Blake being there for him when Chris already knew it wouldn’t ever be an easy struggle. Now he wished he had gushed about him to his sister.

Blake saw the visible shiver in Chris’s shoulders as something else. “Oh, now _you’re_ cold,” he observed, cocking his head to one side, dreamy, mischievous smile on his face. He had gotten comfortable in the brisk March midnight with the navy windbreaker on – pleasantly oversized, it reminded him of Chris’s muscular bulk wrapped around him as well – but now it was at the expense of Chris’s own warmth. The officer only had a thin thermal shirt on, the soft texture of the fabric curving over his flesh, hiding any gooseflesh as small shudders of chill.

Only after Blake mentioned it did Chris truly notice the chill in the air and how his stance had change, from tall and relaxed to hunched against the wind, arms crossed over his chest to more to keep warm than anything else. Giving Blake his jacket might have been an acclaimed act of chivalry, but not if he froze in the process. “I’m fine,” he tried to get out, but Blake wasn’t having any of it.

Moving quicker than Chris thought the activist was capable of, Blake closed the gap between them and wrapped his arms around the officer’s broad shoulders, covering as best he could from the cold. He gasped softly as his touch triggered his mind to remember the feel of Chris’s body next to him, an instant recall that made it feel like the first time he was holding him. Chris’s eyes closed as he leaned into the embrace, threading his arms around Blake’s waist, underneath the open windbreaker, feeling the warmth in more ways than one.

“Better?” Blake whispered, reveling in the slow, tender way Chris’s hands ran up and down his back, pressing their bodies closer.

Chris turned his head, kissed Blake on a rugged cheek, wishing at that moment that he could do more as a gesture of thanks. “Much.”

A kick of daring stirred up in the officer, holding Blake there underneath the spotlights of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, all of the uncertainty and the melodrama of that day behind them. He pulled back only far enough to look into Blake’s eyes, the cool blue-white of the night dwarfed by that warm brown. The activist tensed for only a second as Chris angled his head, leaning towards him. “You’re not worried about –“

“No,” Chris said simply, and pressed his lips sweetly to Blake’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first disparity I noticed when I went away for college was that there were streets that _weren't lit_ , and that was a complete shock to me. I guess I've never really lived in total darkness, most New Yorkers don't know about streets without lights. Whereas rural areas can have miles upon miles of winding streets without any lights whatsoever. I know that it's a strange feeling going from all this light to darkness, so it must be something similar for Chris to go from suburban Virginia to all the light pollution of New York City.
> 
> I personally haven't taken any pictures of [St. Patrick's Cathedral](http://lh3.ggpht.com/_uF0SudIH0wM/RwXA37BK6VI/AAAAAAAADHA/hr64pGTm5t4/New+York+147.jpg) at night, but it is naturally lit up so you can see it from blocks away. It's quite a different kind of a spectacular sight from Times Square which is a few blocks away, much more about accenting the architecture than about being flashy.
> 
> And yes, Chris does duck into a public library and he HAD to just because :P The librarian isn't anyone specific though the library is in a set location, but she's just your run-of-the-mill librarian who will shush you if you're too loud in the reading room :)
> 
> The [Sex and the City tour](http://www.screentours.com/tour.php/satc/) Michelle references is an unofficial bus tour that takes you around Manhattan to the hot-spots featured in the hit TV show. It's a big thing for female tourists to do, and possibly for female tourists with gay younger brothers living in the city as well ;)
> 
> The only thing I really, really flubbed in this chapter was that Fifth Avenue runs from north to south, not south to north, so Blake wouldn't have gotten out of the taxi right on the avenue but probably on the side street. It's not going to bother anybody, even the ones that know the way Fifth Avenue runs, but I just wanted to make that clear XD
> 
> Recent legislation requires taxicabs in New York to accept credit cards for fares but it's a big controversy because of snubbed fares and cabbie rights; some cabbies refuse to take credit cards (which they're not supposed to do). Unfortunately Blake got one of those surly cabbies and had to fish out his cash for the ride.


	16. And when Irish eyes are smiling sure they'd steal your heart away

Chris wasn’t quite aware of the details of how they had disentangled themselves from their embrace at the cathedral, got into a taxi and headed straight for Blake’s apartment. The whole memory was getting fuzzier in his head by the minute, what with Blake’s mouth on his cock a healthy distraction.

“Oh, fuck,” he gasped, hips rising from the mattress to meet with Blake’s lips, hungrily sucking at Chris’s cock, taking the length so easily Chris was faintly reminded of a sword swallower. The heat of the activist’s mouth was intense all around him, his tongue flicking around the shaft and sending shocks of pleasure hard enough to rock through Chris’s body. He lifted his head millimeters to catch sight of Blake overtop him, bare calves dangling off the foot of the bed as he slowly jacked himself. Chris had a sudden flare of envy for that hand between Blake’s thighs, wishing it could be him.

His eyes locked with Blake’s, lustful golden brown meeting with half-lidded green. Blake had his eyes on Chris the entire time, couldn’t bear to look away from the sight of him squirming and writhing underneath his touch, his tongue, how the younger man would arch his back and moan when Blake would take him deeper. He pressed himself down further as he locked eyes with Chris, taking the full, pulsing cock past his own body’s level of comfort until sparse, wiry hairs twitched at the curve of his lip. Chris shuddered, Blake could feel it below him and inside of him, he made that happen; if his mouth weren’t so full of Chris, Blake would have snickered.

“You gotta stop,” Chris breathed out between pants of cool air. He could feel the familiar tightening feeling in his groin, knew what would happen if Blake pressed on. One hand ran up to caress Blake’s cheek, the other one with a vise-like grip on the sheets; he felt Blake’s pulse underneath his fingertips, and under that, his own, inside the older man. The thought alone nearly sent him over the edge.

With a mischievous glint in his eyes that Chris should have known to be healthily wary of by now, Blake slowly pulled away from the officer. His tongue still lazily swirled around the head as Chris shivered from the detachment, both men unwilling to lose that constant physical connection. “Why?” he asked, downright naughty smile on his lips; the vibration of his vocal chords against Chris’s sensitive flesh was not helping at all to alleviate Chris’s problem.

“Gonna come. Stop.” His truncated words, like a telegram or an urgent text message, conflicted directly with the hand on Blake’s cheek, moving northward to the top of his head, tangling in his messy blond hair, begging for Blake to bear down upon him again. He wanted this to last as long as possible, to spend the night together as they both finally understood what they wanted and sought to claim in life for themselves and each other. But a deeper, baser instinct inside made him cringe at the thought of being separated from Blake’s mouth for too long.

This only caused Blake to smile wider; he traced a trail of kisses along Chris’s shaft, so hard he was nearly defying gravity. “You better not fucking come.” Another kiss, a lick, playful nip along the flesh of Chris’s balls. “I’m not done with you yet.” His tongue went lower, probed deeper, teased along the skin at Chris’s opening where few others had ever tread before.

A sharp, stuttered cry of pleasure crawled out of Chris’s mouth; he arched his back, tilted his head towards the ceiling at the new sensation. He wasn’t a stranger to the feeling of an intruding tongue slowly pressing in, of the arms hooked around his thighs in a vain attempt to keep his hips from squirming, nor was he new to the other position of the circumstance and exactly how to give that pleasure. But it was different when it was Blake in between his legs, Blake pausing to press a heated kiss against the inside of Chris’s thigh as he slid a finger in, two, mumbling words against the skin Chris was too fucking gone to hear. Everything felt stronger, more intense now than ever before, that extra layer of emotion there enhancing every one of Blake’s movements; Chris wondered if it would feel like this always, if he could really be that lucky.

“You like this, don’t you,” Blake whispered into heated skin as he curved his fingers inside of Chris, feeling the younger man rock his hips into the touch. It was almost like a fantasy to him, this toned, perfect specimen of man writhing on his bed, digging fingers into his mattress, pleading into the air for his tongue to never, ever stop. He was so hard just from watching Chris, from touching him without ever being touched; he rubbed his cock into the mattress roughly, could feel the sheets damp with his own precum and sweat.

It was foolish of Blake to think he could successfully hold down a man with Chris’s bulk but he liked to try, liked to think he actually had the power to keep the other man’s hips steady, control Chris’s body and thus his pleasure. Chris gasped and clasped a hand over his mouth as Blake pressed again a sensitive nerve, bit into the heel nearly hard enough to draw blood. If Blake kept going like this Chris wouldn’t be able to hold himself off for long.

“Fuck…oh, fuck Blake, you feel so good,” Chris crooned, large palm moving up to cover his eyes, drape over his forehead. Blake noticed and quickly raised a hand to slap it away; he wanted Chris to watch this, to take in everything Blake was doing to him and just how much the activist loved doing it to him. He scissored his fingers inside of him, twisting just so to produce the tiniest, most satisfying gasp and shudder from the other man. “God, where did you learn to –“

“When you come out of the closet they give you an instruction manual,” Blake joked, grinning against Chris’s thigh, placing a lingering kiss there. “And a toaster.” He felt the laugh float through Chris’s body, could feel the joy from the inside out; Blake wanted to feel that in Chris always, wanted to feel it in more than just his fingers.

He slowly rose from his position, moving up Chris’s body like billowing smoke to the heavens. The officer whimpered and writhed as Blake’s fingers retreated; Blake was straddling him now, pale thighs resting against tanned ones, cocks brushing against one another like they had their first night together. “Can I…” Blake questioned, slow grind of his hips; he bent down to take one nipple in his mouth, swirl his tongue around it before gathering the fortitude to ask. “Can I fuck you?”

Chris was panting, trying to catch his breath and let his mind keep pace with all the stimuli Blake was giving him. He gasped and bucked his hips in response; it wasn’t enough to placate the older man. “Let me fuck you,” he requested, his hands sweeping over the muscles of Chris’s body, arms, shoulders, along his hips, Blake didn’t think Chris was apt to refuse at this point, but he wanted to hear the words from him, yearned to hear it.

His hands went around to cover over Blake’s back, dancing over waves and flames, forcing Blake to look into his eyes. There was anxiety there but also assurance, a deep trust in Blake that after all they had gone through that day that the activist wouldn’t hurt him. He had been in this position before, more than once, but with Blake it was different, it was something far past the physical. It wasn’t just about the sex; Chris wanted this experience with Blake, it was all about being everything with him.

“Fuck me,” he said, forceful enough to surprise both Blake and himself. Blake made him want to explore this with him, an experience on a far different level than what Chris had made himself accustomed to. He gripped at Blake’s flesh, hot like flames, cresting like the ocean. “Please Blake…fuck me.”

It took Blake’s breath away, how open and willing Chris was for this, for him; he couldn’t even begin to fathom that this absolutely gorgeous man that nearly every human being in the city would covet, was actually in his bed, begging him with lustful eyes to fuck him. He closed his eyes for just a moment, drinking in the thought and the sound of his name on Chris’s lips like that, humbly pleading, imploring.

There was no way Blake could say no to that voice.

Scooting up another few inches on the bed, Blake made a grab for the drawer handle of the bedside table, fingers grazing against the handle but not maintaining a firm grasp. When he finally did manage to open the drawer, hands fished blindly around its contents for a condom and lube, his eyes were trained on Chris below him. His eyes were nothing but a dark pool of lust surrounded by a ring of vivid green, intently watching Blake’s actions. Chris’s hands were everywhere they could reach, sweeping over Blake’s hips, palming his ass in large, possessive strokes, breezing over his erection just enough to make the touch noticeable. He placed a kiss along Blake’s collarbone, never breaking eye contact through it all.

“Thought you kept your condoms in the breadbox,” he said, cocky, playful smile on his lips.

Blake chuckled, inexplicable blush rising to his cheeks. “Emergency stash,” he replied, fingers finally finding purchase around a square foil package and a small plastic bottle. He pulled his hand back from the drawer with just enough time before Chris pulled him flush against the officer’s body without warning. Strong arms wrapped around Blake’s frame, pinning the older man overtop of Chris; instinctively his lips searched blindly for Chris’s, finding each other like dark passions in the night, like forces of nature that were always meant to be together. Blake moaned into Chris’s mouth as he felt the officer’s tongue slip inside, no longer masked by nerves or fear as he kissed him.

Reaching a hand between their closely sandwiched bodies, Blake expertly wrapped the lube and tore open the foil package with his teeth – he took note that Chris didn’t smile at this, didn’t laugh until his dimples shone but just looked on with half-lidded eyes, sparkling with lust and fascination. He ground his hips into Blake’s erection, his hands finding anything he could touch of Blake, as the older man prepared himself.

“Want you,” breathed Chris, unashamed and needy.

“Are you sure?” Blake asked one last time; he already had one hand shifting Chris’s hips skyward, balancing Chris’s legs up in the air, the other hand running underneath Chris’s balls, fingers slipping in and out methodically.

Chris gave out a moan at Blake’s touch, how Blake asked just to make sure this was what he wanted even with his cock now pressing at his entrance temptingly. He never broke eye contact though his instinct was to throw his head back and enjoy giving himself over to Blake; his will wouldn’t allow him to look away. “ _Fuck_ me,” he implored again; Blake shivered at the intent in his voice.

Blake pushed in, slowly at first, seeing the thinly masked strain in Chris’s eyes at Blake entering him, his body trembling at the intense pressure. Chris was panting now, soft little breaths out of his lips, pink and swollen from the mix of abrasive stubble against stubble. Blake could feel every breath Chris was taking, could feel his very heartbeat from within. It made him want to cry out and come right there, as he thrust tentatively in to the hilt, garnering the tiniest, most delicious sound from Chris’s lips.

But Blake knew there was much more pleasure in store if he held out longer, made Chris feel as amazing as the activist had last night; how he was feeling right in that moment.

A hand snaked up Chris’s thigh, his leg raised up in the air, muscles taut, mind threatening the tendons with terrible harm not to buckle and give in to the pleasure of Blake deep inside of him. “Fuck,” he moaned, voice cracking as Blake pulled out torturously slow and thrust back, hips snapping against Chris. Blake was holding onto his legs for dear life it seemed, the muscles in his arms tense as he slid the hand past Chris’s knee and to his calf, holding him steady as he rocked his hips into the younger man. Blake let out a cool, shuddering breath as his free hand rested on Chris’s hip, giving him critical added leverage to thrust deep and coax those wonderful sounds from Chris’s mouth at a faster speed.

“You feel amazing…shit, Chris…” he groaned, watching the sensation wash over the younger man’s face, golden, glorious pride creeping into his emotions knowing he was making that happen. Chris was so tight, so willing…he had fucked other men before, knew exactly how it felt to lose yourself in that feeling as you bent a shark of a stockbroker over a table and made him beg for more, but this was worlds better, more passionate than Blake could have ever imagined.

“Oh…” Chris pulled a hand down to his crotch, fingers wrapping around his cock and falling quickly into rhythm, jerking himself and twisting on the upstroke, teasing the head in time with Blake’s thrusts. He felt his body trembling, coils of pleasure and tension winding him up from the inside out…Blake’s hands felt like fire against his skin, the grip on his calf, his hips, short-shorn fingernails digging in, searing Chris’s flesh but never burning. And the way Blake felt inside him, filling him, the pressure intense and beyond control yet Chris didn’t want it to ever stop…fuck, and Blake was saying _Chris_ felt amazing?

“Come, baby,” Blake picked up his pace, thin sheen of sweat glazed over his body, the only sounds in the apartment the smack of skin against heated skin and the soft, panting moans coming from the officer’s mouth. What Blake wouldn’t give for this every night, to have Chris wail like this like a soundtrack bouncing off the blue walls, the sound sweeter than any record in the activist’s collection.

Chris’s eyes squeezed shut; this sensation of Blake overtop him, inside him, staring intently at each reaction, was almost too much. He reached out blindly for Blake, fingertips grazing against his flesh, his stomach, thick trail of curly hair curving a pathway down to the base of his cock. Chris just wanted to touch, wanted every part of Blake all at once, but the older man was moving faster than he could catch up with in his state; his hand fell down limply, twisted itself into the sheets. “Fuck, Blake,” he found it was all he could say, the rest of his mind failing as his body trembled with an impending orgasm. “Fuck…”

Highly sensitive to the way Chris’s body tensed, bucked up, ready for release, Blake sped up to a breakneck pace, pulsing deep and aiming right for the spot he knew would take Chris over the edge. “Just come,” he rasped, almost whispered, locking onto the serene chaos fluttering on Chris’s face. His own body was shaking, begging for release…it wouldn’t be long now… “Want to feel you come, Chris…”

“Oh, God,” Chris arched his back, eyes shut so tight stars billowed in his vision. He felt his cock jerk in his hand, felt the warm spurts of come striping his stomach, trickling down his knuckles but he didn’t stop, didn’t dare stop while Blake was still inside him, still gripping his body like Chris would fall if Blake let go.

The tightness of Chris’s body became unbearable, a blinding heat Blake couldn’t escape from nor did he ever care to. He came with a shudder and the officer’s name on his lips, thrusting in one final time in tune with Chris’s aftershocks, feeling his heartbeat racing in tandem with the younger man’s, panting breaths gloriously in rhythm with his.

“Look at me,” Blake whispered, requested; the low forcefulness in his voice made Chris take heed, eyes fluttering open to take in the magnificent sight of a sated Blake Lewis above him and still lingering inside him. Blake thought he would never get used to that startling green in Chris’s eyes, the ones that rivaled the freshest leaves of spring, the brightest shamrocks on any horizon. He nearly keeled over and died at the thought that those eyes now shone for him.

Blake wanted to get out the words – his mouth was open but the throat was dry, lips unmoving, his tongue simply refused to cooperate – but the look in Chris’s eyes was all he needed to see to know that any words between them were unnecessary. They had both found something special with each other, finally found that which they had sought and perhaps never even knew they were looking for.

Instead he simply sighed, shook his head in disbelief of him losing the words; rested his head in the crook of Chris’s shoulder as he came down. It wasn’t like Blake to be at a loss for words, wasn’t his style to be speechless in his world of verse, but he found it happily fitting with Chris as the younger man wrapped his arms around him, hugging him tightly to his body. There were words between them that did not have to be spoken to be understood. Blake loved words, grabbed hold of syllables and phrases and spun them on their heads, molded and managed them to make them his own; with Chris, all the words that needed to be said could be found right in his eyes, warm, sated brown. Chris could read the emotions in those eyes like a newspaper article, could memorize their meanings better than penal code.

With a soft kiss to Blake’s forehead and a chilled shudder as the activist slid out of him, Chris found himself resigning to the fuzzy cloud of sleep he was beginning to know well after such satisfying sex with Blake. He nodded off with the mumbled word “always” on his lips, but didn’t even know if Blake was still conscious enough to hear it.

***

“You’re here.”

Chris slowly batted his eyes open, the consciousness of waking gradually slipping in as the sun crept into the apartment. He felt the arms around him before he saw them, could feel the strength of Blake’s embrace in more ways than one. The exhaustion of the day stacked upon the straining stress of emotions, and Chris had fallen into a heavy much-needed sleep in Blake’s arms. His dreams had been vague and unmemorable but he knew he felt an all-encompassing calm in the dream, the ebb and flow of a beach tide, sand between his toes reminding him of home, the sound of soft, masculine laughter in his ear.

His eyes slowly focused on the sight in front of him, first the wondrous golden brown eyes upon him, sweet like waffle syrup yet potent like an Irish coffee. Then Blake’s smile came into focus, soft curve of his lips like if he grinned too hard Chris would vanish and it would all have been a dream. Blake’s face looked serene, relaxed; they had slept in the same bed for the past three nights, held each other underneath the seafoam green covers but never woke up together, one man always leaving for varied reasons before the other woke up. This time – the time when it mattered most – they were together in each other’s arms, reluctant to even let go.

The activist looked like he was overjoyed at the sight and feel of Chris in his bed but didn’t want to show it; his nose scrunched into a charming smirk, his mouth quirking over to the side to mask a grin. Chris smiled and started moving, hands, groggily grazing over Blake’s back to mark his being awake. It was everything Blake wanted: Chris to wake up to in the morning, someone to look at him that way – soft and sincere but with just the hint of desire that dared to propose another round from last night – and a mouth to widen into a smile just because it was him.

It was what he had been searching for, had failed to find so many times before with any sincerity: something real.

“You’re here,” Chris whispered back, green eyes shining in the early morning sun. Just the absence of what he had felt the previous morning, in all the mornings before with other men that weren’t important, weren’t Blake, was fantastically thrilling; he had no fear within him of being discovered or outed without his consent. Let them do their worst, he thought as Blake slowly leaned in for a delicate kiss. This feeling was worth any consequence the world could throw at him.

Blake groaned as he pulled away, no longer wanting or needing to hold it back. “Say something,” he asked, soft reverie creeping into his voice. He had to make sure Chris was even real, it was like a dream to him that they had even chanced to meet and find each other like this. “Just…say anything, Chris.”

Crow’s feet worked their way to the corners of Chris’s eyes, smile going wide and toothy. “You’ve got stanky morning breath.”

Pouting but with a smirk behind that veneer, Blake jutted his chin out haughtily, the result so ineffective Chris had to laugh. “It is very rude,” he said, almost like a recitation; Chris absently mused as he let his hands wander over Blake’s body if Blake learned the lines from that same instruction manual he mentioned the night before. “To tell the man who went down on you that he’s got stanky morning breath.”

“Well then,” Chris raised an eyebrow, a perfect arch that made Blake fleetingly wonder if he plucked. “I sincerely apologize.”

“Honestly,” Blake shook his head as Chris leaned in to capture those lips once again, eyes drifting closed as he let himself go to the feeling of being in Chris’s arms, of finally waking up next to the man he wanted in his life.

Chris’s lips traveled northward on Blake’s face, leaving a trail of kisses along his cheekbone, temple, lingering on the hairline where the faintest hint of natural chestnut was starting to grow in. He breathed in Blake’s scent, his very aura, and knew that this was exactly what had been missing in his life these years in New York. He lived here, made a career and had friends galore, but only now was he finding something to make it feel like home.

“It’s the first day of spring,” he mumbled, feeling Blake’s body snuggle in closer to his, legs tangling together, soft cock pressing innocuously against Chris’s stomach. Chris snickered inwardly; it wouldn’t be soft for long if he had anything to do with it.

Blake made a pleased cooing sound, questioning without much caring; he was growing tired of the pillow talk, though the feel of Chris’s body in his usually cold bed was inviting, but he either wanted to fall back asleep or have Chris fuck him all the way into the boxspring. “Is it really?” he asked sleepily. “Happy spring, then.”

The activist could feel the smile spread as it pressed against his forehead. For Chris the first day of spring meant so much more than Staten Island Chuck’s old February prediction coming true: it meant the start of something new, of relationships growing along with the sprouting flowers and plants, a new side of Chris he was finally allowing to bloom. It meant a new season of life, of rebirth…of cultivating something beautiful with Blake.

“Happy spring, Blake,” he replied, catching a glimpse of the first sunrise of the season glinting over the Manhattan horizon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not many, but some :) One of Blake's lines in this chapter was inspired by the coming-out episode of _Ellen_ back in the 90s: I have a vague reminiscence of it but iirc Laura Dern's character tells Ellen jokingly that for every woman she converts to lesbianism she gets a free toaster. In the end of the episode you see her and Ellen filling out some forms, then Laura's character is awarded a toaster oven (by none other than Melissa Etheridge). For such a monumental moment in television and in LGBT pop culture, I sure remember some random things about it XD
> 
>  
> 
> And although Puxatawney Phil is still the groundhog authority nationally, New York city has its very own [Staten Island Chuck](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staten_Island_Chuck), a groundhog at the Staten Island Zoo who searches for his shadow every February 2.


	17. You should laugh all the while and all other times smile, and now, smile a smile for me

“Shit –“ The glass hit a snag on the polished wooden bar as Cook slid it across the surface, most surely on its way to shattering on the Cake Shop’s floor. A quick hand across the bar, waiting for the drink he had ordered, caught it before the glass tumbled and beer spilled all over the freshly baked ginger-carrot loaf, the smooth, slippery surface of the glass safe between olive-toned fingers.

Cook breathed a sigh of relief; he had just made that load, after all, and fresh ginger root didn’t come cheap. “Thanks, man,” he grinned; he handed over the other drinks with a bit more care this time before emerging from behind the bar to overturn the chairs and begin closing.

The other man arched an eyebrow suggestively, the positively man-eating glint in his eyes unnoticed by the bartender. “No, thank you,” David Hernandez said, his voice laced with intent, watching the muscles in Cook’s forearms strain and contract as he lifted the chairs onto the café tables. “You know, Cook, I could swear I saw you at The Zipper Factory the other night…”

“Dude, David,” a voice whispered in David’s ear, slightly buzzed but more than aware of the other man’s intentions. He patted his friend on the shoulder sympathetically, watching his fellow bartender close up shop, Cook completely oblivious to the other David’s advances. “You are so barking up the wrong tree.”

Before David could protest the blond had walked away, leaving him to his drink and his own thoughts as he made his way to the back of the café. It had been a small crowd that night, the main act of the night boasting more of a cult following in his Texas hometown that didn’t quite translate to the New York scene, so the stage was set in the back of the main floor instead of the typical basement venue. It suited everyone, Blake thought happily: the musician was pleased with playing a smaller yet intimate room, he and Cook didn’t have to do twice the cleanup as the downstairs venue was closed. And it gave him more free time that night…for this.

He pressed a tender kiss to the temple of the younger man before him, who had been watching him approach from his seat at the stage, face lit up with anticipation even though they had only been separated for mere minutes. Blake took in the scent of the other man, the feel of his skin against his lips, and smile at the conversation going on around him.

“So he finally took you to Madras,” commented Ace, knowing smile on his face as Brandon snickered beside him. It amazed Blake how quickly Ace and Chris had hit it off, falling into a fast friendship like they had been the old buddies and not the other way around. Brandon liked to note that their lives were similar, parallel; Blake insisted there had to have been something about green eyes involved, or biceps.

The younger man shrugged, dimples at full blast; that was something Blake believed couldn’t ever be paralleled. “It was okay, but I’m not big on vegetarian places,” he explained. Blake took him only once, after David had joked about it within Chris’s earshot and the officer practically forced him to take him. There were lots of memories in that restaurant of men come and gone; this man, Blake thought with confidence, was here to stay.

“My man sure does love his meat,” Blake said, loud enough for Ace and Brandon to hear but meant to stain Chris’s cheeks crimson and cause his ears to burn. He wanted to stay, both the seat besides his boyfriend and his open lap looking terribly inviting, but Blake’s conscience told him to help earn his keep and aid Cook in closing up the café. Fairly certain that his guests wouldn’t plunder the place after-hours – because God only knew how the owner or his partner would pitch a fit if the vintage Shirley Bassey poster went missing – he left them with a wave to the happy couple and a sweet peck to the officer’s lips.

Both Brandon and Ace took notice of the younger man, spring green eyes following the activist through the café, a faraway, dreamy smile on his face that he no longer wished to hide. His parent’s anniversary would be coming up soon; Blake had informed Brandon with an excited, almost nervous tone that Chris was going to reveal to his family everything then, having not felt right about bringing this news to them over the phone. Ace had interrupted, asking if the next time Chris went home for a holiday Blake was going to join him; Blake had said nothing but blushed a fiery red, certainly not used to that prospect.

“He is so gone over him,” commented Ace to the older man beside him, in a hushed, conspiratorial tone so that his new friend Chris wouldn’t overhear.

Brandon reached over and lovingly took Ace’s hand in his own, thumb brushing against knuckles gently but with purpose. “You were the same way when you met me,” he reminded the brunette, who grinned knowingly as his lover leaned in for a kiss.

Two slender arms encircled Chris’s neck and shoulders from behind, tattooed but definitely not in the patterns he was used to. “So, this guy here,” an impeccably manicured finger raised to the front of the bar: David was returning with drinks in hand, his demeanor a bit more deflated than when he had enthusiastically volunteered to order the next round from Cook. The voice from behind Chris, the figure hunched over and using his seated frame to lean upon, was overwhelmingly familiar and female, an occurrence he was finding increasingly rare in the Cake Shop. “I think I know him from somewhere.”

“You know all my friends before I do, Gina,” Chris joked, before reaching up to give his roommate an affectionate kiss on her cheek. “You might, though; he works at Hunks most nights.”

“Really?” Gina perked up; Chris heard the tone in her voice, that tone, and knew this wasn’t going to end well. “Is he a bartender there?”

Chris smirked. “He’s one of the…dancers, G,” he explained, remembering David’s last tirade when Blake absent-mindedly called him a stripper.

He didn’t have to see the smile on Gina’s face behind him to know it was there, wide and calculating. “So he’s limber.” Chris really, really needed to get that mental image out of his head. “Is he single?”

“I thought you had gaydar,” he said with a wink, receiving a slap on the shoulder blade for his troubles. “Honestly, G,” his voice turned sincere; he knew Gina was the most supportive of his friends over his new relationship but he always had the feeling that there was a bit of jealousy there, that Chris wasn’t supposed to find love when she’d been comfortable with loving men for 24 years longer than he had. “You’re going to find that one person someday, I know you will.”

The arms came back around his shoulder for a warm hug. “Not if I keep hanging out with a bunch of gay guys,” she joked, but the parting kiss on his temple, quite different from the one Blake left there as well, told him she meant the sincerest of thank-yous for his friendship.

Chris smiled warmly, eyes scanning over the small crowd of Blake’s friends mulling about, some making their own conversations in corners of the café while others still paid heed to the strumming guitarist on stage, his latest tune a faint reminiscence of Bob Dylan. Three weeks ago Chris would have never even considered walking into the Cake Shop, making friends with gay activists and liberal journalists, their openness and contentment in their sexualities and personal identities would have been both a temptation and a taunt against the officer. But none of that was there now: he felt comfortable, even happy, debating the few merits of the mayor with Ace with an arm wrapped casually around his boyfriend’s waist, with no fear, no worry of being found out. He finally realized that fighting who he was had been a deadly losing battle; that in this place, surrounded by these people with Blake at his side, was where he belonged.

Thinking absently about snatching Blake away from his bartending duties and stealing a kiss or two – it wasn’t like Chris couldn’t kiss Blake any time he pleased or that he wouldn’t be joining the activist in his apartment after closing, but even a few moments apart when Chris wasn’t touching him, holding him, were dull and unpleasant – Chris overheard two concertgoers in the café, their chairs scooted up to the foot of the stage in attention. He had rather guessed the dreadlocked musician’s style would attract the interests of the Cake Shop’s new salesgirl, but the other spectator was a bit of a surprise.

“He just feels the aura of the music, you know?” the blond girl said, completely devoid of irony, her expressive hands moving like cogs and wheels in front of her accentuating her passion. “The beat just runs right through his _soul_.”

The other figure coughed deliberately, shaking his neck from side to side, his stylish bob swaying from the movement. “Sweetheart,” Danny condescended towards the older woman, clicking his tongue disapprovingly at her rose-colored view of the Lower East Side music scene. “That aura you’re feeling is just a fucking _shitload_ of weed, trust me.”

Overhearing Danny’s comment and seeing the teenager’s rolling eyes from a mile away, the young man on stage gave the pair a wink without confirming or denying Danny’s assumption. The musician gave a soft, lazy chuckle as he focused on a different melody on his guitar: Chris recognized the song immediately, memories of his father playing his old Bill Withers LPs to an enthralled young Christopher, claiming that culture wasn’t to be found just in museums.

He felt the sharp poke of a woman’s fingernail between his shoulder blades, high on his back; Gina recognized the song right away, too. “ _Sing_ ,” she implored, hissing voice in his ear like a devilish temptation. “I know you know this song, you sing it every morning in the shower.”

“Why are you listening –“

“Thin walls, remember?” Gina smirked, and Chris blushed, just like every time the raven-haired girl reminded him. She gave him another playful poke towards the stage. “I know you can do this; you know you can do this. Get up there!”

Fear quickly mounted in Chris’s nerves, that old familiar feeling he thought had had banished weeks ago. He loved music, every aspect of it – from the pure timbre of an aria to the delicate yet powerful machinations of a mixing board – but it wasn’t something that gave him a particular confidence. He was always just content to watch others make the music, for those like the young man on stage to stand in the spotlight. But the encouraging buzz of alcohol underneath his skin and the comforting, friendly mood of the room gave him an extra push towards the stage, added with the physical shove from Gina. If he was going to do any amount of singing outside of the shower, it would be in this club, surrounded by the people he knew and trusted with so much more.

With cheeks blushing a blazing red, broad shoulders stooped so low out of embarrassment he looked hunchbacked, Chris stepped up on the small stage to the whoops and drunken catcalls from Gina and the others and a grin and nod from the musician on stage. He quickly passed over the microphone to the officer – oh God, there it was Chris thought, that turning point where he could just turn it down and slink back to his seat, but he held the microphone in his hand, feeling its weight between two fingers and a thumb, and began to sing.

“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone…”

Blake popped his head up from behind the bar, the dull droning sound of the sink’s running water not nearly loud enough to drown out the voice floating through the Cake Shop. He knew that voice – heard it as a beaming, unhindered laugh, felt the syllables like snowflakes on his skin in a whisper, memorized the feel of the timbre as that voice shouted out in orgasm. But he never heard it like this, didn’t even fathom the possibility that the voice and the man he was falling more and more for every day could sing.

“Only darkness every day…”

He left the water running on the dirty glasses as he emerged from the bar, eyes on the stage, gaze unflinching and fixed as in a trance. There was a deep-rooted shy demeanor to Chris up on that stage, eyes to the floorboards and a crimson stain in his cheeks, the reminiscence of the insecure Chris he had seen fold into himself that first morning at the parade. But behind that Blake saw a raw passion in his face, an excitement sizzling like electricity right underneath the surface of the skin, a concentration that Blake usually only saw when Chris was looking into his eyes.

Feeling a smile uncontrollably spread over his face, his eyes lit up with the music and watching Chris like this, his Chris, Blake made a beeline for the stage, knowing exactly what he wanted to do.

“Ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, she’s always gone too long, anytime she goes away…”

Chris felt the eyes of the small crowd on him and it invigorated and terrified him all at once, everyone seeing just what he was capable of and supporting him through every line and run, but also all able to see his flaws, his insecurities and fears. You were exposed when you were on stage and Chris had spent so many years running from that kind of exposure, in more ways than one. His voice hit on a sweet note and he decided to run with it, taking the tone up a few steps and bringing in a falsetto that even a sneaky eavesdropping Gina never heard. But there was certainly something to be said for the feeling of wowing a crowd.

His eyes flickered up to scan the small crowd of friends and immediately caught upon a pair of golden brown eyes staring back, pleasantly transfixed on the officer’s frame, watching him intently as he weaved through the tables towards the stage. A kick of confidence stirred up in Chris as those eyes locked with his, the most support and affection he had ever seen shining in his boyfriend’s eyes. He could have been singing to thousands at a concert, to millions on television, and all that would ever really matter was the love and acceptance he saw in those eyes.

“Wonder this time where he’s gone…”

To his startled surprise Chris watched Blake approach the stage and pilfer a spare microphone from the stand. His nervous stance straightened out into a confident swagger as he watched Blake step up and curl his own voice around the lines of the song, deep and seductive in a way Chris usually only heard in the bedroom. The smooth confidence in Blake’s voice, the way his hips swayed with the musician’s guitar accompaniment, it all brought out something deep within Chris that he never even realized he had. Strengthening his resolve to stand on that stage, to sing this tune and dominate it, with Blake by his side.

“Wonder if he’s gone to stay…”

It didn’t pass by Chris lightly that Blake had changed the song to fit his own sensibilities and style, working his tone around a riff fabricated previously only in his mind. It was what Chris truly admired in Blake, the way he took something already created and made it irrevocably his own, how he weaved his words around an event to both accurately describe it and make it feel alive through his eyes. How he could take a song decades old and sing it like no one had ever heard it before.

Blake had changed the lyrics as well; Chris smiled, grinned at the memory of all those pronoun games he had played like a professional, expertly dodging personal questions about his love life and how silly it all seemed now that he was proud to call this noisy, bouncy little man his boyfriend. But even in song Chris couldn’t find it in him to change what has already been written; with Blake the words were merely guidelines, the melody and rhythm the important part to truly allow himself to make the song, much like the rest of the world, his own.

The activist glided around the stage, his smooth styles garnering laughs from the small crowd of friends as well as cheers for the both of them; Brandon pointed to Blake’s effortless footwork and grinned, mouthing over to Ace and his friends “I taught him that,” while Ace blushed. Gina shouted “Take it off!” at the pair, to which Danny promptly replied “Oh my God, don’t!” David Hernandez held his glass up to the couple and smiled, a silent toast to the magic they were making both onstage and off. Chris looked out into the audience and, though fleetingly wishing Phil could have stolen a night away from his wife and daughters to share in this, he couldn’t think of a better group of people for it all.

“Ain’t no sunshine when he’s gone, and this house just ain’t no home…”

He approached Chris as he sang, the glint of mischief in his eyes a clear sign that this duet would go on for while longer after the pair left the stage. Enticingly yet almost tenderly Blake brushed his fingers against the cotton of Chris’s shirt, a soft touch just above his heart. Vivid memories swept back to the both of them, stark images of churning crowds swirling around them though they remained still, transfixed on one another. Endless banners of green, orange and white dulled by the solitary rainbow flag that for that brief shining moment had flown above all at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. That touch harkened back to the first time they touched, Chris’s rough fingers pressing against Blake’s chest, nestled between the green carnation boutonniere and his prideful pin, the contact burned into their memories.

“Anytime Rich goes away…”

Blake gave Chris a suggestive wink, his eyes shining with affection, mouth curving into a genuine smile through his words. He went to pull away, to acknowledge the crowd and bask in the attention as he was wont to do whenever there was a spotlight on his face or a microphone in his hand. But Chris pulled him back abruptly, a quick expression of surprise replacing the confident smirk on the activist’s face. He hadn’t been expecting the younger man to take control of the situation here, up on stage, surrounded by friends and kind-hearted people but a crowd of onlookers nonetheless. But with a strong hand enveloping his, holding it to Chris’s chest so Blake could feel the other man’s heart beat for him, well, he certainly wasn’t complaining.

Chris pulled him in closer, contented smile on his lips, a smile he hadn’t felt in ages and a lightness in his heart he had only discovered with Blake by his side. Amidst sounds of support and encouragement from the friends he had met in New York, old and new, the ones that knew him best, Chris angled his head down and pressed Blake’s lips to his, a soft and tender kiss that promised many more in the years to come.

**Author's Note:**

> Since around 1991 various GLBT groups have petitioned to be allowed to march in NYC's St. Patrick's Day Parade. Although logic would dictate that the parade is a public gathering and so they should be allowed to march as Irish homosexuals, the parade, which has actually been around so long it predates the American Revolution, is organized by a private group called the Ancient Order of Hibernians. A conservative, fiercely Catholic organization, the AOH turns down the request each year (the GBLT organizations making the requests have changed over the years) and, as a "private" organization the city upholds that they can exclude whoever they want. Every year protests are held along the parade route because of this controversy, and creates an atmosphere of tension between the protesting GLBT community and the NYPD.
> 
> You can read more about the ongoing controversy in these news articles (all from the New York Times; it's interesting to see how the language used to describe the GLBT community has changed over the years):  
> [Gay Group Rebuffed in Bid To Join St. Patrick's Day Parade](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9D0CEFD9133DF93BA35750C0A967958260&scp=11&sq=%22st.+patrick's+day%22+gay&st=nyt)  
> [Judge Says Gay Group Can't March](http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE6D91639F935A25750C0A963958260)  
> [Wearing the Green, and the Pink](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/09/opinion/09fri4.html)  
> [Bigotry on Parade, Again](http://www.gaycitynews.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=19409674&BRD=2729&PAG=461&dept_id=568864&rfi=6)


End file.
